Stem cells in the brain’s hypothalamus control how fast aging occurs

In a very interesting news article on Technology Networks, scientists at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine “have found that stem cells in the brain’s hypothalamus govern how fast aging occurs in the body.”

The article is a straightforward read on a potentially world-changing research project.

“Einstein researchers made the surprising finding that the hypothalamus also regulates aging throughout the body. Now, the scientists have pinpointed the cells in the hypothalamus that control aging: a tiny population of adult neural stem cells, which were known to be responsible for forming new brain neurons.”

“Researchers injected hypothalamic stem cells into the brains of middle-aged mice whose stem cells had been destroyed as well as into the brains of normal old mice. In both groups of animals, the treatment slowed or reversed various measures of aging.”

There’s still a very long way to go before this even becomes feasible for human trials, but the idea that we now know where the aging process is taking place in the brain and how to slightly reverse it is absolutely amazing.

The article and links to the Albert Einstein findings are here.