It seems every few months we find something new that increases lifespan in mice 10-20% (17-20% in this study). They appear to be different chemicals or treatments. So I have two big questions here.
1) Obviously aging is a multifaceted problem, are there metastudies studying the interactions? This clearly needs to be done as people are assuming increased longevity in mice equates to increased longevity in humans are are self administering these treatments prior to human trials.
2) How can independent treatments through independent mechanisms cause such similar (and quite large) increases in lifespans? Is mice biology just far simpler? Am I misunderstanding the independence? Is this low sampling causing biases or some other statistical phenomena? Is there bad faith and people reporting the research (or the researchers themselves) overstating the value of these treatments? Are these treatments just making mice live closer to their natural lifespans but just being better able to adapt to an environment not optimized for their biology? (I know not all labs use warm and mice optimized environments, though my understanding is most do)
As a minor question, we see these studies a lot in mice. Are they being followed up in other animals and humans? We never hear about followups on HN and so that makes me pretty skeptical. Mice aren't humans. There's a lot of people interested in longevity research. I know there's a lot of money being put into it. How do we distinguish hype from reality?
One hospital's guidelines for the use of Albumin -
https://www.universityhealthsystem.com/~/media/files/clinica...
Note the reference to the Cochrane collaboration review as a trusted source. Some HN'ers have expressed unfamiliarity with this organization.
Not a solid study for at least five distinct reasons:
1. The lifespan of both control and treated mice (C57BL/6N) is very significantly less than all other studies of which I am aware. See for example: https://phenome.jax.org/measures/23201 by Yuan et al. In this study untreated B6 untreated B6 mice typically have a median lifespan of over 800+ days.
2. The phenotyping of animals was apparently not done blinded to treatment. This can introduce strong bias in data generation.
3. No completely untreated control. For all we know the iv injection every three weeks contributed to short lifespan snd perhaps albumin mitigated stress response.
4. No control for injection of other major serum proteins such as gelsolin. What evidence demonstrates selectivity of albumin? None.
5. This is again a study of a single inbred genome of mouse. N=1. While both sexes were studied, it would be great to see results replicated properly using genetically diverse UM-HET3 mice.
That is rather remarkable, because mice are very prone to cancer. Much more so than humans. I have heard longevity experts remarking that even interventions that could actually significantly raise lifespans of other species are going to run into the wall of enormous cancer-ness of mice, which reduces the overall effect.
Without the presence of albumin, the high pressure of the blood vessels would push more fluids into the tissues.
Sounds to me like this would have significant implications for the ability of the body to return interstitial fluid to the bloodstream efficiently.
Refer to SENS foundation for actual serious research on reversing aging[0].
0. https://www.sens.org/our-research/intro-to-sens-research/
Serum albumin transports thyroid hormone, which regulates energy-consumption processes.
Not a doctor, but a PhD with some work on protein pharmacokinetics. Serum albumin and antibodies are the two longest lived proteins in your blood because we have special mechanisms and proteins to salvage them from where other proteins get degraded. That’s why their half life in blood is in months. They’re also (unless you make them targeted) benign in many ways (hence IVIG is used fairly indiscriminately). Thus, of all the longevity related therapy ideas, this seems the most benign. And makes a little bit of sense too, though further mechanism studies are needed (which are always hard).
If Peter Thiel or some other longevity obsessed techidiot is reading this though, don’t go around injecting albumin into yourself yet - and don’t talk to quack doctors obsessed with longevity either. What I’ve learned time and again is you always think Ying and your body’s biology will come and Yang you in the kidney.