As “living dead”, vampires rely on the sustenance offered by the blood of the “living living” to remain animated. While, hopefully, the stuff of legend, new research recently published in the scientific journal Nature suggests the blood of healthy mammals may indeed hold useful medicinal properties for their less healthy peers. The study, which is being hailed as a potentially significant discovery for new dementia treatments for humans, found the blood from particularly fit mice can improve the brain function of more sedentary mice.
Scientists injected blood of young mice considered extremely fit as a result of getting plenty of exercise into other mice of the same age with much less active lifestyles. The result was evidence of improved memory the scientists linked to a higher presence of a particular protein with an anti-inflammatory influence on the body. While the effect on mice may not translate to the same result in humans, the scientists also notice that the presence of the same protein rises in older people who exercise regularly and frequently.
Professor Tony Wyss-Coray of the Stanford School of Medicine in California, where the research was conducted comments:
“The discovery could open the door to treatments that, by taming brain inflammation in people who don’t get much exercise, lower their risk of neurodegenerative disease or slow its progression.”
Professor Wyss-Coray draws a parallel with the kind of loss of cognitive function often experienced by flu sufferers:
“You get lethargic, you feel disconnected, your brain doesn’t work so well, you don’t remember as clearly.”
Flu symptoms include a kind of neuroinflammation that is similar to the permanent effects caused by degenerative brain conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Mice were given cages with either locked or free running wheels. Those with free running wheels would typically cover 4-5 miles per night on them while sleeping during the day. The mice whose running wheels were locked lived sedentary lives for three months.
Blood was collected from the active and sedentary sample groups of mice and then other sedentary mice were injected with plasma from that blood every three days. Those that received plasma from other sedentary mice showed no change in cognitive ability. However, those that received the injections from the active mice performed notably better when given cognitively demanding tasks.
Professor Wyss-Coray summarised the results with:
“The mice getting runner blood were smarter. The runners’ blood was clearly doing something to the brain, even though it had been delivered outside the brain.”
It was further discovered that removing the anti-inflammatory protein, clusterin, from the runner mice’s plasma largely negated its anti-inflammatory effect. Additional research found that clusterin binds to receptors found on endothelial cells that line blood vessels in the brain. In most Alzheimer’s patients, the cells are inflamed, quite possibly due to a deficiency of clusterin.
The hope is that finding a way to introduce more clusterin into human brains either through plasma infusions, or possibly even prescribing more exercise as a preventative measure, could one day help treat forms of dementia.