Growth Hormone Receptor Knockout in Adipose Tissue Extends Life in Mice

The record for mouse life span is held by growth hormone receptor knockout lineages, approaching a 70% gain, but a lot of that increase is due to early life effects. These animals are very small in comparison to their peers. In comparison, growth hormone receptor knockout in adulthood has a greater impact on female mice than on male mice, and the gain in life span is much reduced. In today's open access paper, researchers demonstrate another approach, generating a lineage of mice in which growth hormone receptor is only disabled in fat tissue. Again, the outcomes are different in male and female mice, and smaller than those produced by full knockout. While the effect size of full growth hormone knockout in mice is larger than that produced by most other interventions, this seems unlikely to be a viable approach to greatly extend human life span. The life span of short-lived species is more plastic in response to changes in environment and metabolism than is the case for long-lived species such as our own. We can make direct comparisons between mice and humans for the practice of calorie restriction, and see that while mouse life span can be extended by up to 40%, adding more than a few years of human life span is just not in the cards. We can also directly compare interference in growth hormone receptor function, as a human lineage analogous to the growth hormone receptor knockout mice exists. Those individuals born with Laron syndrome inherit a loss-of-function...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs