The anti-cancer drug dasatnib in combination with quercetin being trialed for safety against lung fibrosis has shown impressive anti-aging results.
Participants in the trial were ~70 years old and suffering from pulmonary fibrosis a debilitating and eventually fatal disease. After the trial, 100% of the study showed improvement
participants were able to walk faster, get up from a chair more quickly and scored better in ability tests.
The benefit is a result of removing 'zombie cells' from the body.
Senescent cells - also known as zombie cells - are not completely dead so are not cleared out by the body, but are too damaged to repair tissue or carry out normal functions. Unable to repair itself or clear out the waste, the body gradually deteriorates.
Previously animal studies have shown that removing these cells reverses the ageing process, extends lifespan, and restores lost youth.
Better yet, it does not sound like a pill every day for the rest of your life sort of thing
“It has a hit-and-run effect,” added Dr Kirkland. “The drug starts working quickly and we would ideally like to be able to give it just once a month.”
Of course increasing the cost 30x should nicely take care of that drawback.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @09:55PM (4 children)
Great it works for this specific disease but nowhere in TFA does it mention life extension for people without the disease.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @10:12PM (1 child)
Someone can't read.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @07:20AM
Give ikanreed [soylentnews.org] editor's privileges, its the only way to make sure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @10:13PM
Forget extended lifespan:
Wouldn't you like to leave as healtly as a young man up until you expire?
That's what this article implies!
(Score: 3, Funny) by driverless on Friday January 11 2019, @01:07AM
I want one that works in reverse, it clears out the good cells and leaves the zombie ones. Soon, the world shall tremble before the might of my zombie army! Muahahahahaha!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @10:32PM (7 children)
My father died of "idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis" which is a fancy way for doctors to say "his lungs are full of scar tissue and we're not sure why". This comes along 14 years late for him, but it's good to know there might be help for others now.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Pax on Thursday January 10 2019, @11:25PM (6 children)
I have idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. i was diagnosed 4 months ago. So as far as i am concerned this shit can't get to market fast enough.
Who'd have thought acid reflux could lead to this shit? as was the case with me
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Friday January 11 2019, @04:29AM (5 children)
I'm no doctor (wish I was) but are you saying acid reflux caused idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis?
Could it be parallel diseases caused by something else?
Please look for drug trials- I'm sure you'll get into one.
(Score: 2) by Pax on Wednesday January 16 2019, @10:20PM (4 children)
yeah man. it's a known connection. i get insane reflux even though I get tablets(ranitidine) and also kolanticon gel for when the reflux hits.
At night though I can wake up choking on the reflux. sometimes a portion of it gets inhaled and scars the lungs.
I live in Scotland but have mentioned this to my GP and he's checking out for any trials running locally.
For now though it's pulmonary rehabilitation and 200/6 fostair 2 x puffs twice a day plus 100 micrograms salamol (Ventolin) inhaler when needed.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday January 16 2019, @10:59PM (2 children)
I'm in USA and doctors have to prescribe most drugs- we can't just buy them and try, although I've been to a country where you could buy almost anything without a prescription (not narcotics). I don't know about Scotland, but if you can need a doctor to prescribe these, you should be able to get both dasatnib and quercetin in Scotland. If not, try to buy abroad. Both are oral pills.
(Score: 2) by Pax on Friday January 18 2019, @07:48AM (1 child)
prescriptions are totally free in Scotland except for those earning over 50,000 GBP as i recall.
I will ask my doctor about those two meds.. I am fairly sure though that they might not be on the list of approved medicines...
Just googled dastanib, seems it's used for untreated chronic myeloid leukaemia but does show good results for IPF so that should be fine to get a prescription.
Quercetin though I don't think it'd be available on prescription but I can ask and see what he says.
cheers for the info RS3.. it's appreciated
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday January 18 2019, @06:31PM
Oh, you're very welcome, but I'm mostly just parroting the article / synopsis. That said, I do wish I had gone to medical school.
Dastanib is quite expensive, so I'm not sure if that becomes a factor when asking for an "off-label" medication, but that's the magic phrase you might want to use when talking to a doctor who might not know anything about it. Please refer them to the research studies.
In the US, one of our absolute top medical centers is Mayo Clinic, so here are a few other ideas (medications "pirfenidone (Esbriet) and nintedanib (Ofev)" listed later in the page): https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/pulmonary-fibrosis/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20353695 [mayoclinic.org]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday January 18 2019, @06:48PM
Again, just to reiterate, I see that many of the underlying mechanisms of PF cause both of the symptoms you have- lung issues and GI problems, and (and many more worth looking into) so I'm not sure that the GERD caused the PF.
Years and years before it became somewhat commonspeak I was pointing out that "correlation is not causation". Just saying it might not be, and that there are many other problems the underlying disease can cause, and is often linked to sarcoidosis and many other connective tissue diseases. Which reminds me that a big study of connective tissue diseases and problems just came out recently, and much of it is thought to be autoimmune. Which I feel is the cause of many diseases and syndromes, possibly triggered by all of the crazy chemicals and compounds we humans have created and subject ourselves to, but this could go on and on so I'll stop here. :)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @10:36PM (5 children)
that molecule available as a dietary supplement totally suppressed my allergies to various pollens, somethings no antihistamines managed to achieve for more than a few weeks.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DrkShadow on Friday January 11 2019, @01:01AM (3 children)
I have something similar, except I only get three days. Ever since I was evelen years old, take Claritin, allergies have cleared up. Cool! Three days later, they're back. Fourth day, it's like I'm not taking anything. Switch to Allegra. Same thing, three days, and they're back. The green one, same thing. It's apparently a known thing that antihistamines are only meant for acute use, and they typically lose efficacy after a couple weeks -- as is the case with you. (My immune system is so overly strong I'm plagued with auto-immune diseases.)
Instead of constant antihistamine use, you should be going with the nose sprays that are out. Budesonide nose spray (lime green one, generic name) really works exceptionally well for me. I also tried Nasonex, but that did next to nothing from what I can recall.
the nasal sprays tend to work by gene modification -- they alter the cells in the affected area to not produce histamines, and so you never have the effects of allergic reaction. After I started taking this, I was disgusted when I went out in my back yard and was pounded with the heavy, wet, flowery, warm air of the garden. Ugh. (That was perhaps the first time I'd ever smelled something like that.) Its efficacy seems great -- it's not really doing much more than preventing over-production of histamines by the body. Allergies are an outlier, so they're not particularly needed, and I don't get injured in the face enough that I'm concerned about lacking the ability to become inflamed there. Do the nose spray once a day, even if you don't "need" it. It takes about 3 days to become effective, and in the first few days you might do two doses a day.
The nasal spray helps with scratchy eyes and throat slightly as some of the material leeches to those areas, but it's not necessarily guaranteed. I'm not sure it's good to squirt them in your eyes, but on the worst days, a Loratadine dose will clear things up. It's pretty infrequent that I've had to do both.
One other thing that worked for me, I was really, really trying to get something before I knew that the nose sprays worked well. First, doubling up. The drug facts sheet says people took six times the recommended dosage without ill effect, so doubling up on bad days isn't so much a problem -- except, still, diminishing returns. Second, alternating drugs. There are three popular modern antihistamines -- Loratadine, Cetirizine, and Fexofenadine. My goal was to avoid accumulating a tolerance by rotating which drugs I take. I also wanted to alternate them by skipping which drug is filtered by which organ -- Fexofenadine by the liver, and the other two by the kidneys. So, one day fexofenadine, certizirine, fexofenadine, loratadine, fexofenadine, repeat.
Alternating in this way definitely prevented my body from building up a "tolerance" to the antihistamine. The real drawback is that the effects wear off after 24 hours. The fix here, again, is the nose spray: it takes 3 days to get running, and it takes three days to a week to fully wear off. By that time, the strong allergy days have hopefully left.
Interesting..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @01:15AM
I used to use those spray but for me quercetin works better (the spray doesn't do much for my eyes) with the drawback of requiring 3 pills a day instead of 1 mist
(Score: 1) by optotronic on Friday January 11 2019, @02:42AM
I just discovered alternating antihistamines within the past year or so. I didn't know anyone else was doing it. It certainly helps me.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Friday January 11 2019, @02:53AM
First, forgive me if you already know about this stuff, you may...
Have you tried ketotifen? It works partly by being a mast cell stabilizer, so the release of histamines is slowed and you don't need as high an anti-histamine dose.
If it does work well, you should have your tryptase levels checked to screen for mast cell disease (actually - you should already have been tested with your history - but do make sure)
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday January 11 2019, @11:03PM
Neo-synephrine has a rebound effect. After you use it and it effect dissipates, you need it worse than before.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @10:45PM (20 children)
Learn to grow old gracefully, instead of looking for panacea. Nothing more cringy than geezers trying to act "young".
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @10:54PM (17 children)
Acting immature is one thing.
Having your body function properly is another.
I will never fault someone for doing things to stay healthy such as taking the drug mentioned in the article.
(That has nothing in common with cosmetic treatments like face lifts.)
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @11:06PM (16 children)
"Anti-aging" is not about curing cancers, heart ailment, diabete, etc. It's about "being young".
Anti-aging fad is a boomer disease.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday January 10 2019, @11:31PM (15 children)
Boomer fad? Riiight. People have been concerned with stopping aging for centuries or millennia [wikipedia.org]. And I guarantee the millennial generation would not go down gracefully.
What if the underlying aging diseases [wikipedia.org] are treated, and biological immortality is the side effect?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @11:37PM (10 children)
Then this planet is effectively fucked.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Thursday January 10 2019, @11:52PM (9 children)
The planet will do just fine. The human species will spread out, get more efficient, and birth rates will continue to drop.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @01:12AM (8 children)
"and birth rates will continue to drop."
So many people just cannot grok this but if you have true immorality birth rates must drop to ZERO. If No one dies, no one can be born. Because nobody can understand this is a good reason reason to ban age extension research.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Friday January 11 2019, @02:18AM (4 children)
Biological immortality does not mean zero deaths. There will continue to be plenty of accidents, murders, suicides, unexpected medical crises, etc.
Banning the pursuit of knowledge and healthiness? Great idea.
Just try to ban it. I dare you.
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(Score: 2) by legont on Friday January 11 2019, @05:14AM (3 children)
employeecitizenis firedput to death first."Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by ewk on Friday January 11 2019, @08:35AM (2 children)
Ehm... the other way around work better... the most experienced citizen is put the death first.
That way the pursuit of (more) knowledge is culled a lot better. :-)
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @01:46PM (1 child)
The rule that encourages the desired result is:
Anyone who has a child loses anti-aging treatment privileges
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday January 11 2019, @11:38PM
Yeah... and abortion rights extended to 21 years old of a child.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Friday January 11 2019, @02:58AM (2 children)
As long as there are people who think it's okay to withhold medical care from others for any reason at all, as well as people to see that they get elected or otherwise reach positions of power, there will be plenty of deaths, don't you worry.
Fixing this kind of thing will likely take a far back seat to fixing how commonly humans act like vicious, empathy-bereft pond scum.
Then there are accidents. Various natural catastrophes. Crappy diets. Murder for the usual swath of reasons. Disease. War. Police. Etc.
TL;DR: Don't you worry your little head about it, there's death a-plenty ahead.
--
I'd agree with you, but then
we would both be wrong.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Friday January 11 2019, @10:40PM (1 child)
According to this page, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm [cdc.gov] accidents are about 8% of deaths and suicides 2%.
Eliminating aging and all diseases while changing nothing else would lead to an average life expectancy of around a thousand years before an accident got you.
In reality, as people live longer, they often become more risk averse. Those that don't will tend to be the ones who die in avoidable ways like extreme sports.
The long term result will be a risk averse society (Niven's Puppeteers) that over-engineers stuff to avoid accidents. I would expect that eventually suicide will become a leading cause of death.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Saturday January 12 2019, @01:46AM
Yes, so there will be significant attrition just from those. If we manage to finally get into space, that may change the odds some. It's a very unforgiving environment.
While I am fond of Niven's writing (and give him credit for nearly everything good Jerry Pournelle ever put his name on), I don't mistake him for a fortune teller.
Possibly. Another factor is the urge to have children might settle down a bit if people knew they didn't have to do that to see their genes wander off into the future. It also makes a lot more sense to have children after you've had enough time to establish material circumstances that are able to support them, and are sure that the current social circumstance is one you'd actually want to raise children in. Right now, I wouldn't have kids, for instance — IMHO, our society is in deep trouble and my undertaking parenting isn't called for.
There is also always the path of regulation. Never underestimate a regulator... they're prone to committing the most amazing abuses, and the citizens have a very poor record of yanking on their leashes.
Hard to say how things would actually go, though. The obvious path isn't always the path taken.
--
Stupidity is actually a superpower. We learn this when
we repeatedly fail to defeat it with intelligence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @11:44PM (1 child)
That's the point. Target the diseases, not the time. Stopping/reversing time is a physics problem, not pharmacuetical.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Thursday January 10 2019, @11:57PM
There is no contradiction with what the anti-aging people are doing, and they certainly aren't building a time machine.
If you can address all the root causes [wikipedia.org], you can prevent many diseases, get the cosmetic benefits (look young indefinitely), and prevent people from dying indefinitely.
Anti-aging is really the ultimate preventative medicine. And if aging and related diseases are cured, it would lower health care expenditures dramatically.
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(Score: 2) by Mykl on Friday January 11 2019, @02:10AM (1 child)
It still wouldn't cover all of the other ageing effects:
- Cataracts
- Alzheimers
- Stroke
- etc
Something will eventually get you over time. Personally, I'd prefer to check out before my mind goes rather than after.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday January 11 2019, @02:23AM
SENS (such as treatment dealing with accumulation of "waste" in or out of cells) would absolutely cover Alzheimer's and stroke. Maybe cataracts as well, though they are not something that will "get you".
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @11:00PM
Aging is a series of diseases. It is unethical to not try to cure them.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ElizabethGreene on Friday January 11 2019, @03:58PM
Grow old gracefully my hiney; removing senescent cells is one of the key steps in engineering negligible senescence [wikipedia.org].
Getting old and dying is a huge bug, and this is a very early tiny step towards fixing it.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 10 2019, @10:54PM (3 children)
Start them early
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday January 11 2019, @12:16AM (2 children)
Side effects?
Drug dependency?
Feeding the big pharma profits?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday January 11 2019, @04:02PM
IIRC from the paper, side effects from the n=17 trial were nausea and digestive issues with one participant dropping out due to a respiratory infection. All of the participants were > 70.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Friday January 11 2019, @04:59PM
The drug combo, DQ, is dasatinib 100 mg/day plus quercetin 1250 mg/day. From the trial they dosed 3 x Week x 3 weeks.
Dasatinib is a $45/pill (per GoodRx) chemo drug, Quercetin is an OTC supplement that costs pennies. The first patent on Dasatinib expires in 2020, but I don't know if other patents have been issued for it. I would assume they have. (Generics become available when the patents expire, usually.)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @12:16AM (8 children)
Here is what goes on.
1) Every tissue in your body consists of a number of "tissue stem cells" that divide when necessary to replenish the tissue when the functional cells die. One division from a tissue stem cell results in one daughter remaining as the stem cell, and the other going on to migrate where it needs to be. Once there, it will divide and each daughter will divide, etc to generate a population of final functional cells.
2) There is a certain chance of various errors every cell division of these tissue stem cells. These errors can be genetic (point mutations, chromosomal rearrangements, etc), or just junk like amyloids accumulating, or a mitochondria going bad, whatever. Anything that accumulates.
3) After these tissue stem cells undergo a certain number of divisions (seems to be ~40-60) from the zygote (fertilized egg), the risk of generating a descendant that is malignant gets too high on average. Thus, with the goal of extending the organisms life the stem cell is supposed to stop dividing and replenishing the tissue.
4) Because the tissue is not going to be replenished any more, the cells already there need to keep functioning for much longer than when the organism was younger. Eventually, not enough cells will be functioning correctly and you get organ failure.
So the choice is to
a) kill the partially functional cells (fast organ failure)
b) let the tissue stem cells keep dividing (increases the chance of cancer)
c) leave things as they are with partially functional cells in the tissue (slow organ failure)
These researchers are choosing choice A.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @01:45AM (5 children)
Or, maybe choice (a) (kill the partially functional cells) leads the tissue stem cells to notice a lack of functional cells and divide a little more to prevent organ failure. Which turns it into choice (b).
Choice (b) may be the best one these days. We have much better cancer treatments than we used to, so on balance getting cancer may be better than organ failure.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday January 11 2019, @02:25AM (1 child)
If we can tackle cancer with stuff like nanobots, then we should absolutely choose the option that leads to cancer.
Basically everyone will get cancer eventually, so it would have to be dealt with at some point regardless of anti-aging strategies.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by legont on Friday January 11 2019, @05:27AM
Yes. Basically, we convert all the issues into a cancer issue(s) and then deal with them one by one. This is not ideal, but should work. It also has an advantage of being incremental progress as opposed to a revolution.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @03:56AM (2 children)
Source?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @12:48PM (1 child)
https://progressreport.cancer.gov/after/survival [cancer.gov]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 11 2019, @03:41PM
As I expected. You can't really tell from that data, it would be interesting to look further but I'm pretty sure I know what I'll find (various issues with comparing changing populations in the 9% of the US they consider).
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.3322/caac.21551 [wiley.com]
So, looks like the headline chart[1] is only using data from the 9 original SEER regions (Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, New Mexico, Utah, and the metropolitan areas of Atlanta, Detroit, San Francisco–Oakland, and Seattle–Puget Sound). Also, some new data source was added in 1995, which is about when we see that peak in incidence/mortality. So we have some room for systematically biasing the data here, especially when we consider the various pitfalls of "age-adjustment".
They also say much of the mid-1990s spike in incidence for males was due to detection of asymptomatic prostate cancer:
[1] https://wol-prod-cdn.literatumonline.com/cms/attachment/479916e1-e899-4965-a35d-7517620064cf/caac21551-fig-0002-m.jp [literatumonline.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by ElizabethGreene on Friday January 11 2019, @04:45PM (1 child)
You're talking about something different.
The key points on senescent cells are:
They are old cells that have become non-functional. They don't perform the function they are designed to do.
They are functionally immortal, and continue taking up space and resources within the host. Their autolysis mechanism is busted.
They encourage senescence in their cellular neighborhood.
Most critically, they cause Inflammation [wikipedia.org]. This is the big problem.
Normally Inflammation is a good thing. It triggers your self repair mechanisms to come in, clean up an injury, and fix it. This "good" inflammation is called Acute inflammation. The problem with senescent cells is they request repair with nothing to clean up; there is no work to do. That creates systemic or chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is a DOT debuff. (DOT=Damage over Time [webopedia.com]) The more senescent cells you have the more DOTs you carry.
The working hypothesis is that killing off and cleaning out the senescent cells will reduce the overall level of systemic/chronic inflammation and let the body's own self-repair mechanisms step back in to fix real problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 12 2019, @05:41AM
Thats not the definition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_senescence [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2, Informative) by ChrisMaple on Saturday January 12 2019, @06:02AM
The February 2019 edition of Life Extension magazine covers the JAMA report on the combination of quercetin and dasatnib. Life Extension notes that dasatnib might possibly be replaced with black tea extract, at lower cost and lower risk of toxicity.
(Score: 2) by cosurgi on Saturday January 12 2019, @12:19PM
https://www.ebiomedicine.com/article/S2352-3964(18)30629-7/pdf [ebiomedicine.com]
https://www.ebiomedicine.com/article/S2352-3964(18)30629-7/fulltext [ebiomedicine.com]
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/01/190107112944.htm [sciencedaily.com]
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