Food enhanced with isotopes could increase lifespan

Food enriched with specially developed proteins could add at least 10 years to human life span, a team of scientists led by Mikhail Shchepinov, formerly of Oxford University, claimed after demonstrating the concept in worms.

Researchers say that in the small scale studies they noticed that the worms' life spans were extended by 10% when they fed the nematode worms, used extensively in ageing research, nutrients enriched with a heavy isotope of hydrogen, deuterium, hoping that the same can help extend human life and reduce the risk of cancer and other diseases of ageing.

Researchers believe that steaks and chicken fillets laced with rare, heavy forms of elements, "isotope-enhanced" proteins, could strengthen cells and protect them against oxidation, caused by highly-reactive particles, free radicals that are released in the body as a by-product of biological processes in our cells.

An isotope of an element is produced by changing the number of neutrons in its nucleus. While hydrogen has one neutron, deuterium, or heavy hydrogen, has two.

Food enriched with isotopes is thought to produce bodily constituents and DNA more resistant to detrimental processes, like free radical attack. The heavy isotopes extend lifespan by making bonds within the delicate molecules inside and around our cells harder to break. "Because these bonds are so much more stable, it should be possible to slow down the process of oxidation and ageing," he said.

The isotopes could be used in animal feed so that humans could get the "age-defying" isotopes indirectly in steaks or chicken fillets, for instance, instead of eating chemically enhanced products themselves, an occasional top-up would be sufficient to have a beneficial effect, Shchepinov says.

The concept received a mixed reception from ageing experts in the field. Impressed with the isotopic approach, Aubrey de Grey, the Cambridge-based gerontologist, says it could be very relevant to the rates of several chemical and enzymatic processes relevant to ageing, “It is a highly novel idea,' he says.

“But it remains to be seen whether it can be the source of practicable therapies, but it is a prospect that certainly cannot be ruled out,” he added.

For some deuterium is toxic, if consumed in moderate quantities, while for others it would be almost impossible to consume the right amount of fortified food to have a beneficial effect.

Charles Cantor, a professor of biomechanical engineering at Boston University, said, "Preliminary data indicates that this approach can potentially increase lifespan without adverse side effects. If this is borne out by further experiments the implications are profound."

In November last year, a landmark US study carried out by the Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging, linked the red wine to the human life span.

In their study on mice that time, the US researchers had found that a substance, called Resveratrol, a polyphenolic compound which lies in the skin of red grapes and, therefore, in red wine, has survival benefits in a mammal.

In the experiment the researchers had found that the obese mice treated with Resveratrol had a median increase of about 15 percent in lifespan.