Herbal extract boosts fruit fly lifespan by nearly 25 percent, UCI study finds

Rhodiola rosea promotes longevity separately from dietary restriction

2013-06-18

(Press-News.org) Irvine, Calif., June 18, 2013 — The herbal extract of a yellow-flowered mountain plant long used for stress relief was found to increase the lifespan of fruit fly populations by an average of 24 percent, according to UC Irvine researchers.

But it's how Rhodiola rosea, also known as golden root, did this that grabbed the attention of study leaders Mahtab Jafari and Sam Schriner. They discovered that Rhodiola works in a manner completely unrelated to dietary restriction and affects different molecular pathways.

This is significant, said Jafari, associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences, because dietary restriction is considered the most robust method of improving lifespan in laboratory animals, and scientists have been scrambling to identify compounds that can mimic its effects.

"We found that Rhodiola actually increases lifespan on top of that of dietary restriction," Jafari said. "It demonstrates that Rhodiola can act even in individuals who are already long-lived and healthy. This is quite unlike resveratrol, which appears to only act in overfed or unhealthy individuals."

The researchers proved this by putting flies on a calorie-restricted diet. It has been shown that flies live longer when the amount of yeast they consume is decreased. Jafari and Schriner expected that if Rhodiola functioned in the same manner as dietary restriction, it would not work in these flies. But it did. They also tested Rhodiola in flies in which the molecular pathways of dietary restriction had been genetically inactivated. It still worked.

Not only did Rhodiola improve lifespan an average of 24 percent in both sexes and multiple strains of flies, but it also delayed the loss of physical performance in flies as they aged and even extended the lives of old flies. Jafari's group previously had shown that the extract decreased the natural production of reactive oxygen species molecules in the fly mitochondria and protected both flies and cultured human cells against oxidative stress.

Jafari and Schriner, an assistant project scientist in Jafari's laboratory, are not claiming that Rhodiola supplements will enable humans to live longer, but their discovery is enhancing scientific understanding of how supplements believed to promote longevity actually work in the body.

Rhodiola has already shown possible health benefits in humans, such as decreasing fatigue, anxiety and depression; boosting mood, memory and stamina; and preventing altitude sickness. Grown in cold climates at high elevations, the herb has been used for centuries by Scandinavians and Russians to reduce stress. It's also thought to have antioxidant properties.

Jafari's research group is currently exploring the plant's potential to kill cancer cells, improve Alzheimer's disease and help stem cells grow.

Rhodiola is readily available online and in health food stores. Jafari, though, has analyzed several commercial products and found them to not contain sufficient amounts of the reputed active compounds – such as rosavin and salidroside – that characterize high-quality products.

### Kevin Lee, Stephanie Truong, Kathyrn Salvadora, Steven Maler, Alexander Nam and Thomas Lee, all undergraduate students in Jafari's lab, contributed to the work, which was supported by the National Institutes of Health (grant R21 AT004987). Study results appear online in PLOS ONE at http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0063886.

URL to video in which Jafari discusses therapeutic intervention on aging pathways and her work determining the mechanism of botanicals which her group has shown to extend life span in the fruit fly, Drosophila: http://vimeo.com/41823367

Video of Mahtab Jafari discussing botanical therapeutic intervention on aging

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UC Irvine is a top-ranked university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Led by Chancellor Michael Drake since 2005, UC Irvine is among the most dynamic campuses in the University of California system, with more than 28,000 undergraduate and graduate students, 1,100 faculty and 9,400 staff. Orange County's second-largest employer, UC Irvine contributes an annual economic impact of $4.3 billion. For more UC Irvine news, visit news.uci.edu.

News Radio: UC Irvine maintains on campus an ISDN line for conducting interviews with its faculty and experts. Use of this line is available for a fee to radio news programs/stations that wish to interview UC Irvine faculty and experts. Use of the ISDN line is subject to availability and approval by the university.

Contact: Tom Vasich
949-824-6455
tmvasich@uci.edu

UCI maintains an online directory of faculty available as experts to the media. To access, visit http://www.today.uci.edu/experts.

NOTE TO EDITORS: Photo available at http://news.uci.edu/press-releases/herbal-extract-boosts-fruit-fly-lifespan-by-nearly-25-percent-uci-study-finds/

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Small dam construction to reduce greenhouse emissions is causing ecosystem disruption

2013-06-18

CORVALLIS, Ore. – Researchers conclude in a new report that a global push for small hydropower projects, supported by various nations and also the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, may cause unanticipated and potentially significant losses of habitat and biodiversity. An underlying assumption that small hydropower systems pose fewer ecological concerns than large dams is not universally valid, scientists said in the report. A five-year study, one of the first of its type, concluded that for certain environmental impacts the cumulative damage caused by ...

Tackling a framework for surgical innovation

2013-06-18

NEW YORK (June 18, 2013)-- An international team of investigators co-led by Weill Cornell Medical College is offering a new framework for evidence-based surgery and device research, similar to the kind of risk and benefit analysis used in evidence-based medicine. "Currently, there is no dynamic research framework to systematically detect devices and surgeries that don't offer any benefits to patients or may even be harmful," says co-lead investigator Dr. Art Sedrakyan of Weill Cornell Medical College. In the June 18 issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ), Dr. Sedrakyan ...

ACS NSQIP® data is more accurate than administrative data for tracking 30-day hospital readmissions

2013-06-18

Chicago (June 18, 2013): With Medicare penalties on hospitals with higher-than-expected rates of 30-day readmissions expected to rise in 2014, more hospitals are evaluating the most accurate methods for tracking readmissions of patients. A new study appearing in the June issue of the Journal of the American College of Surgeons finds that the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program® (ACS NSQIP®) led to more accurate data tracking than another popular database, the University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC), for tracking 30-day hospital readmissions ...

Atherosclerosis in abdominal aorta may predict adverse cardiovascular events, UTSW scientists report

2013-06-18

DALLAS – June 18, 2013 – Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of aortic atherosclerosis can predict the risk of heart attacks and other cardiovascular events in otherwise healthy individuals, researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found. The investigation, published in the June issue of Radiology, is the first large-scale study to evaluate the predictive value of MRI measures of aortic atherosclerosis for future cardiac events. Using MRI, researchers at UT Southwestern were able to measure in thousands of participants very subtle but highly significant differences ...

Fiber-optic pen helps see inside brains of children with learning disabilities

2013-06-18

For less than $100, University of Washington researchers have designed a computer-interfaced drawing pad that helps scientists see inside the brains of children with learning disabilities while they read and write. The device and research using it to study the brain patterns of children will be presented June 18 at the Organization for Human Brain Mapping meeting in Seattle. A paper describing the tool, developed by the UW's Center on Human Development and Disability, was published this spring in Sensors, an online open-access journal. "Scientists needed a tool that allows ...

Chemical probe confirms that body makes its own rotten egg gas, H2S, to benefit health

2013-06-18

A new study confirms directly what scientists previously knew only indirectly: The poisonous "rotten egg" gas hydrogen sulfide is generated by our body's growing cells. Hydrogen sulfide, or H2S, is normally toxic, but in small amounts it plays a role in cardiovascular health. In the new study, chemists developed a chemical probe that reacts and lights up when live human cells generate hydrogen sulfide, says chemist Alexander R. Lippert, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. The discovery allows researchers to observe the process through a microscope. The researchers ...

Sexual minority youth need specialized treatment from therapists

2013-06-18

President Obama officially declared June as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month. However, despite advances in civil rights, sexual minority youth are still at greater risk for suicide than their heterosexual peers, according to the Suicide Prevention Resource Center. A University of Missouri psychology graduate student recently published recommendation to improve psychologists' treatment of sexual minority youth, which could help improve psychological functioning and reduce depression and suicide rates. "Psychologists sometimes face a particular ...

Voices may not trigger brain's reward centers in children with autism, Stanford/Packard study shows

2013-06-18

STANFORD, Calif. - In autism, brain regions tailored to respond to voices are poorly connected to reward-processing circuits, according to a new study by scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine. The research could help explain why children with autism struggle to grasp the social and emotional aspects of human speech. "Weak brain connectivity may impede children with autism from experiencing speech as pleasurable," said Vinod Menon, PhD, senior author of the study, which will be published online June 17 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...

Mapping a room in a snap

2013-06-18

Blind people sometimes develop the amazing ability to perceive the contours of the room they're in based only on auditory information. Bats and dolphins use the same echolocation technique for navigating in their environment. At EPFL, a team from the Audiovisual Communications Laboratory (LCAV), under the direction of Professor Martin Vetterli, has developed a computer algorithm that can accomplish this from a sound that's picked up by four microphones. Their experiment is being published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). "Our software ...

Average UK salt content of packaged bread has fallen 20 percent in a decade

2013-06-18

The average salt content of packaged bread sold in the UK has fallen by 20 per cent over the past decade. But salt levels still vary widely, indicating that further targets are required, finds research published in the online only journal BMJ Open. Bread is the biggest contributor of dietary salt in the UK, providing almost a fifth of the total derived from processed foods. The recommended daily intake for UK adults is a maximum of 6 g, with the current average 8.1 g a day. Excess dietary salt can lead to high blood pressure, and an increased risk of heart attack, stroke, ...

Measurable residual disease shows strong potential as an early indicator of survival in patients with acute myeloid leukemia

Chemotherapy and radiation are comparable as pre-transplant conditioning for patients with b-acute lymphoblastic leukemia who have no measurable residual disease

Herbal extract boosts fruit fly lifespan by nearly 25 percent, UCI study finds

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: