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posted by martyb on Saturday July 11 2020, @10:54AM   Printer-friendly
from the of-mice-and-mien dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The new study, published July 9, 2020 in Science, showed that after mice exercise, their livers secrete a protein called Gpld1 into the blood. Levels of this protein in the blood correspond to improved cognitive function in aged mice, and a collaboration with the UCSF Memory and Aging Center found that the enzyme is also elevated in the blood of elderly humans who exercise regularly. But the researchers showed that simply increasing the amount of Gpld1 produced by the mouse liver could confer many of the same brain benefits as regular exercise.

[...] Villeda lab graduate student Alana Horowitz and postdoctoral researcher Xuelai Fan, PhD, [pursued] blood-borne factors that might also confer the benefits of exercise, which is also known to rejuvenate the aging brain in a similar fashion to what was seen in the lab's "young blood" experiments.

Horowitz and Fan took blood from aged mice who had exercised regularly for seven weeks and administered it to sedentary aged mice. They found that four weeks of this treatment produced dramatic improvements in learning and memory in the older mice, similar to what was seen in the mice who had exercised regularly. When they examined the animals' brains, they found evidence of enhanced production of new neurons in the region known as the hippocampus, a well-documented proxy for the rejuvenating benefits of exercise.

To discover what specific biological factors in the blood might be behind these effects, Horowitz, Fan and colleagues measured the amounts of different soluble proteins in the blood of active versus sedentary mice. They identified 30 candidate proteins, 19 of which, to their surprise, were predominantly derived from the liver and many of which had previously been linked to functions in controlling the body's metabolism. Two of these proteins -- Gpld1 and Pon1 -- stood out as particularly important for metabolic processes, and the researchers chose to study Gpld1 in more detail because few previous studies had investigated its function.

[...] The team found that Gpld1 increases in the blood circulation of mice following exercise, and that Gpld1 levels correlate closely with improvements in the animals' cognitive performance. Analysis of human data collected as part of the UCSF Memory and Aging Center's Hillblom Aging Network study showed that Gpld1 is also elevated in the blood of healthy, active elderly adults compared to less active elders.

To test whether Gpld1 itself could drive the observed benefits of exercise, the researchers used genetic engineering to coax the livers of aged mice to overproduce Gpld1, then measured the animals' performance in multiple tests that measure various aspects of cognition and memory. To their amazement, three weeks of the treatment produced effects similar to six weeks of regular exercise, paired with dramatic increases in new neuron growth in the hippocampus.

Without the exercise, you'll still be unable to rapidly climb several flights of stairs, but now you'll be much more aware of it.

-- submitted from IRC

Journal Reference:
Alana M. Horowitz, Xuelai Fan, Gregor Bieri, et al. Blood factors transfer beneficial effects of exercise on neurogenesis and cognition to the aged brain [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.aaw2622)


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:11PM (2 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday July 11 2020, @02:11PM (#1019503)

    a collaboration with the UCSF Memory and Aging Center found that the enzyme is also elevated in the blood of elderly humans who exercise regularly

    The book you're looking for which contains both plain text and dozens of pages of medical journal references is

    "The Barbell Prescription: Strength Training for Life After 40 Paperback – December 1, 2016 by Jonathon M Sullivan (Author), Andy Baker (Author), Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Foreword)"
    ISBN-10: 0982522770
    ISBN-13: 978-0982522776

    No amazon affiliate link here and I have no connection with the book other than owning it and basing my exercise routine on it.

    To answer your very specific question without reading the hundreds of pages I have read, the main side effect seems to be a substantial boost in basal metabolic rate and over the millennia far more humans have died of starvation than obesity so "on average" evolution pushes old people to be the slow moving tribal elders you'd expect.

    There are numerous other noncognitive effects of strength training such as wildly lower skeletal problems, improved blood glucose numbers, weight lifting is surprisingly effective cardio once you're too strong for the 3 pound weights LOL, etc. So thats nice that you can remain smart when elderly without exercising as long as you don't mind dying early of diabetes and obesity related cardiovascular malfunctions and obesity related cancers and a ton of other stuff that'll kill you or make you miserable. Or, you could go to the gym, check out the cuties in yoga pants while lifting, and live a healthier longer life...

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 11 2020, @04:26PM (#1019580)

    Bbut what about the teh magic protein?? I didn't sign up for a major in Phys Ed.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:45PM

    by sjames (2882) on Saturday July 11 2020, @09:45PM (#1019674) Journal

    Sure, but some people may actually have other medical issues that prevent getting a lot of exercise. Even if grandma puts racing slicks on the O2 tank, she's not likely to be competing in any marathons...