Researchers led by Steve Horvath, known for developing epigenetic clocks that estimate biological age from DNA, tested a blood plasma fraction from young pigs on old laboratory rats.
The team first built six new epigenetic clocks specific to rat tissue, then used them to measure the treatment's effect. In old rats given the porcine plasma fraction, called E5, the epigenetic age of blood, heart and liver tissue was cut by more than half, with a smaller but still measurable effect in the hypothalamus.
The epigenetic changes came with physiological improvements, including better biochemical markers, more youthful behavior, and a shift in antibody sugar chains toward an anti-inflammatory pattern, all tracking the same direction as the methylation data. Several authors are founders, employees or paid consultants of the company developing the treatment, a conflict of interest the paper discloses, and the result is not yet independently replicated.
Read the original study
Horvath et al., GeroScience, 2023 · doi.org/10.1007/s11357-023-00980-6
Young pig blood, an old rat's reset button.
Source
- Horvath, S., Singh, K., Raj, K., Khairnar, S. I., Sanghavi, A., Shrivastava, A., Zoller, J. A., Li, C. Z., Herenu, C. B., Canatelli-Mallat, M., Lehmann, M., Habazin, S., Novokmet, M., Vučković, F., Solberg Woods, L. C., Martinez, A. G., Wang, T., Chiavellini, P., Levine, A. J., . . . Katcher, H. L. (2024). Reversal of biological age in multiple rat organs by young porcine plasma fraction. GeroScience, 46(1), 367–394. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-023-00980-6