Key points from article :
The older we grow, the weaker our muscles get, riddling old age with frailty and physical disability.
Scientists looked at the similarities between muscle aging and degenerative muscle diseases.
Protein aggregates deposit in skeletal muscles during natural aging.
Found that these aggregates impair mitochondrial function.
"These abnormal proteotoxic aggregates could serve as novel biomarkers for the aging process," - Auwerx, co-author.
Fed worms with vitamin nicotinamide riboside and the antitumor agent Olaparib.
Boost the levels of NAD+, essential for maintaining mitochondrial function, and whose levels decline during aging.
Turning on "mitochondrial quality control system" reduced the protein aggregates and improved the worms' fitness and lifespan.
Scientists then moved on to human muscle tissue, taken from aged subjects and IBM patients.
Produced similar improvements in protein and mitochondrial homeostasis.
Research by Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne published in the Journal Cell reports
