Life-Prolonging and Anti-Aging Effects of a Widely Used Blood Pressure Medication in Animals

The high blood pressure drug rilmenidine has been shown to slow the aging of worms, an effect that could theoretically help us live longer and stay healthy in later years.

Rilmenidine was chosen for this latest study because previous studies have 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 prolong life in several animal models. It remains a matter of ongoing debate whether this is related to human biology or represents a potential risk to our health.

Finding ways to achieve the same benefits without the expense of excessive calorie restriction could lead to new ways to improve health in old age.

And in a series of tests by an international team of researchers, young and old Caenorhabditis elegans worms treated with a drug commonly used to treat high blood pressure lived longer and scored higher on a range of health indicators in the same condition. as calorie restriction as he hoped.

Molecular biogeneticist João Pedro Magalhaes of the University of Birmingham in the UK said: “For the first time, we have been able to show animals that rilmenidine can increase lifespan. “

C. elegans is a favorite for research because many of its genes share similarities with counterparts in our genome. However, despite this similarity, it is still very distantly related to humans.

Further tests showed that gene activity associated with calorie restriction could be observed in the kidney and liver tissues of rilmenidine-treated mice. In other words, some of the changes brought about by calorie restriction are also seen in animals and are thought to bring certain health benefits with high blood pressure medications that many people are already taking.

Another discovery was that a biological signaling receptor called nish-1 was critical to the effectiveness of rilmenidine. This particular chemistry could be used in future efforts to increase lifespan and slow down aging.

“We found that the life-prolonging effects of rilmenidine were reversed when nish-1 was removed,” the researchers wrote in their paper published in January.

What makes rilmenidine such a promising candidate as an anti-aging drug is that it can be taken orally, it is already widely prescribed, and its side effects are relatively rare and mild (including palpitations, insomnia, and drowsiness in some cases).

There is still a long way to go to find out if rilmenidine will work as an anti-aging drug in humans, but early signs in tests in worms and mice are encouraging.

The study is published in the journal Aging Cell.

Source: Science Alert