Even when treated late in life reducing the burden of senescent cells has been shown to extend life and healthspans. Treatment of aged mice with Fisetin a natural product found within fruits and vegetables has now also been shown by researchers from the Mayo Clinic and the University of Minnesota to have significant positive effects on life and health spans.
Damaged cells are accumulated with age, when cells get to a certain level of damage they also go through an aging process called senescence, these cells release inflammatory factors telling the immune system to clear away the damaged cells, but they are not cleared away as effectively and begin to accumulate and cause low level inflammation and release enzymes that can degrade tissues.
Fisetin a natural product reduces the level of these damaged cells within the body. This was discovered while treating mice that were towards the end of life with this compound to see whether it could promote any improvements. Results suggest that life and healthspans can be extended with Fisetin, however further investigations are required to address many questions including proper dosage, limitations, how it acts on different tissues, and if results can be reproduced in humans. One thing that can be answered is this hasn’t been done before because researchers didn’t have a way to identify if treatment was attacking senescent cells until recently.
Researchers suggests that finding show the drug works, and this was the first demonstration showing positive effects of the drug on specific subsets of the damaged senescent cells within given tissues as senotherapeutic extending life and healthspans.
