Quoted by
Cordis: "A youthful for her years smiling actress promoting an anti-ageing cream whose manufacturers proclaim holds the secret to eternal youth; it is such a tired advertising format that we hardly even notice it anymore, with most of us approaching the plethora of lotions and potions available to us with scepticism.
And now cynics across Europe can turn to a new EU-funded study, from an international team of researchers to back up their argument.
Writing in the journal Nature, scientists from France, Germany, Hungary, the United Kingdom and the United States present evidence showing that proteins believed to significantly increase lifespan in a number of organisms do not in fact affect animal longevity.
The gene that produces this protein, called sirtuin, is often what anti-aging creams claim to target. Many in the beauty industry believe that sirtuin, often dubbed the 'longevity gene' is activated by resveratrol - a plant derived drug found at trace levels in red wine. But research has shown that this belief is ill-founded.
The study was backed with grants of EUR 10 699 805 and EUR 10 million of funding as part of the PROTEOMAGE ('Functional analysis of evolutionarily conserved mechanisms of ageing on advanced proteome analysis') and LIFESPAN ('Integrating research into development and ageing') projects, respectively. Both projects were carried out under the 'Life sciences, genomics and biotechnology for health' Thematic area of the EU's Sixth Framework Programme (FP6).
Sirtuins had previously been linked to aging and longevity in yeast, the nematode worm and the fruit fly, organisms commonly used as models for the biology of human aging. Researchers had shown that when the organism's genes overproduced sirtuin, its lifespan was significantly extended. In the nematode worms this was sometimes by as much as 50%.
This study provides almost conclusive evidence that the effects on animal longevity seen in earlier experiments were not in fact connected to sirtuin.
One of the study authors, Dr David Gems from the University of London, first examined two different strains of nematode worm, each from a different prior study. The worms had been genetically manipulated so that the sirtuin gene was overactive. As expected, these worms lived longer than worms that had not been genetically manipulated, the control worms.
However, after precautions were taken to ensure that the only difference between control and test worms was the elevation of sirtuin levels, they found that the longevity disappeared. This implied that some other genetic factors must have caused the longevity initially seen. In one of the two original strains, they identified this as a mutation in a gene involved in the development of nerve cells.
Dr Gems comments: 'These results are very surprising. We have re-examined the key experiments linking sirtuin with longevity in animals and none seem to stand up to close scrutiny. Sirtuins, far from being a key to longevity appear to have nothing to do with extending life. But I think this is good news in a way: after all, revising old ideas can be as important as presenting new ones to assure scientific progress. This work should help to redirect scientific efforts toward those processes that really do control aging.'
The team also examined a transgenic version of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, in which the sirtuin levels were raised. This transgenic model had been the subject of earlier research which appeared to show that over activation of sirtuins in the fruit fly increased longevity.
The team were able to prove that genetic factors other than sirtuins genes were the real cause of the longevity."