The drug for high blood pressure Rilmenidine It has been shown to slow down the aging of worms, an effect that in humans could hypothetically help us live longer and keep us healthier in our final years.
Rilmenidine was chosen for this latest study because previous research has shown that it mimics the effects of calorie restriction at the cellular level. Reducing available energy while maintaining nutrition in the body has been shown to increase lifespan in several animal models.
Whether this translates into human biology or is one potential danger to our healthis a topic of ongoing debate. Finding ways to get the same benefits without the expense of extreme calorie restriction could lead to new ways to improve health as we age.
In a series of tests carried out by an international team of researchers young and old Caenorhabditis elegans Worms treated with the drug — which is usually used to treat high blood pressure — lived longer and showed higher readings on a variety of health markers, as well as calorie restriction, as the scientists had hoped.
“For the first time, we were able to show in animals that rilmenidine can prolong lifespan,” says molecular biogerontologist João Pedro Magalhães, from the University of Birmingham in the UK. “We are now keen to investigate whether rilmenidine might have other clinical applications.”
the C. elegans Worm is a favorite for studies because many of its genes share similarities with counterparts in our genome. But despite these similarities, it’s still quite a distant kinship to humans.
Further testing showed that calorie restriction-associated gene activity was seen in the kidney and liver tissue of rilmenidine-treated mice. In other words, some of the changes that caloric restriction produces in animals that are thought to confer certain health benefits also occur with a high blood pressure medication that many people are already taking.
Another discovery was that a biological signaling receptor called Nish-1 was critical to rilmenidine’s effectiveness. This particular chemical structure could be targeted in future attempts to improve lifespan and slow down aging.
“We found that the longevity-prolonging effects of rilmenidine were abrogated when nish-1 was removed,” the researchers write in their published paper. “Crucially, rescue of the Nish-1 receptor restored lifespan extension after treatment with rilmenidine.”
Low-calorie diets are difficult to follow and come with a variety of side effects, including hair loss, dizziness, and brittle bones. It’s still early days, but there’s a suspicion that this high blood pressure drug could offer the same benefits as a low-calorie diet while being easier on the body.
What makes rilmenidine a promising candidate as an anti-aging drug is that it can be taken orally, is already widely prescribed, and its side effects are rare and relatively mild (in some cases, they include palpitations, insomnia, and drowsiness).
There’s still a long way to go to determine if rilmenidine would work as an anti-aging drug for humans, but early signs in these worm and mouse tests are promising. We now know a lot more about what rilmenidine can do and how it works.
“With a global population that is aging, the benefits of delaying aging, albeit small, are immense,” says Magalhaes.
The research was published in aging cell.
