Researchers at the University of Southern California's Leonard Davis School of Gerontology studied humanin, a short peptide made inside mitochondria that seems to rise in people whose parents lived exceptionally long.
In the peer-reviewed study, circulating humanin measured in 18 children of centenarians, who are themselves more likely to become centenarians, ran significantly higher than in 19 age-matched people without that family history. In mice, humanin and a synthetic analogue called HNG improved metabolic markers and lowered inflammation when given twice weekly in middle age.
The human finding is observational, drawn from a small set of blood samples rather than an experiment, so it shows an association with longevity rather than proof that humanin itself causes it. Whether raising humanin levels in an ordinary person would do anything useful is still an open question the mouse work only begins to answer, and no humanin-based drug is approved for use in people.
Read the original study
A peptide that seems to run in long-lived families.
Source
- Yen, K., Mehta, H. H., Kim, S.-J., Lue, Y., Hoang, J., Guerrero, N., Port, J., Bi, Q., Navarrete, G., Brandhorst, S., Lewis, K. N., Wan, J., Swerdloff, R., Mattison, J. A., Buffenstein, R., Breton, C. V., Wang, C., Longo, V., Atzmon, G., . . . Cohen, P. (2020). The mitochondrial derived peptide humanin is a regulator of lifespan and healthspan. Aging, 12(12), 11185–11199. https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103534