New Drugs Make Worm Live Twice as Long

Sept. 6 -- You want to live forever — or at least a whole lot longer? A tiny worm currently being investigated by a British and American team of scientists could hold the clue to a longer and healthier life.

The microscopic nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, normally lives only 20 days, after which it usually curls up and dies.

But now scientists, using some very simple drugs, have managed to double its life span. And, with a little help from flies and mice, and possibly some human guinea pigs, they are hot on the trail of what they think could be the “elixir of life.”

The results of the experiments, published in the latest edition of Science magazine, show that the research team has managed to delay the aging process and postpone a natural death in this particular worm.

But will it work for humans?

‘Aging Is a Condition’

“These results are the first real indication we have had that aging is a condition that can be treated through appropriate drug therapy,” says team member Simon Melov of the Buck Institute for Age Research in California. “Further studies on higher organisms in the near future will allow us to answer whether or not we have to reconsider aging as an inevitability.”

The scientists used two simple drugs to mimic the body’s natural way of reducing the damage caused by “oxygen free radicals” — chemically reactive forms of oxygen that are a normal by-product of animal metabolism. These free radicals attack healthy tissues and DNA if allowed to roam around too freely and too long.

The drugs they have used are synthetic version of two natural enzymes, superoxide dismutase and catalase. Their job in the body is to attack those marauding free radicals and break them down into harmless water and oxygen.

Worms that developed in the presence of these drugs lived between 30 and 120 percent longer than those who lacked the drugs. On a human scale, that opens up the prospect of a “normal” life span of 120 years, and possibly well beyond.