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Maybe Vampires Are on to Something: Young Blood May Slow Aging in Old Mice

Just two weeks before Halloween, scientists at Stanford revealed that doses of young blood will help rejuvenate older bodies – for mice, at least. It’s an exciting discovery because mouse blood and human blood express age in similar ways.

Dracula might be onto something. Just two weeks before Halloween, scientists at Stanford revealed that doses of young blood will help rejuvenate older bodies – for mice, at least. It's an exciting discovery because mouse blood and human blood express age in similar ways.

In a study that hasn't yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, Stanford physiologist Saul Villeda and his team describe hooking the circulatory systems of young mice to old mice and watching the blood exchange work its magic. After the blood had fully mixed, old mice started showing healthier brain activity. Specifically, old mice receiving young blood exhibited cell regeneration in parts of their brain where new cells don't grow, which strengthened their neural connections and sharpened their ability to learn and remember.

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The latest findings, which Villeda presented at a Society for Neuroscience conference in New Orleans this week, build on research Villeda published in Nature last year showing that young mice injected with blood from old mice exhibit signs of old-age. The young mice in that study generated fewer neurons and were more susceptible to inflammation, whereas the brains of old mice exposed to young blood grew more stem cells.

"We know that blood has this huge effect on brain cells, but we didn't know if its effects extended beyond cell regeneration," Villeda said, according to NewScientist.

The blood swapping experiments didn't stop there. A dozen old mice were given eight shots of either young or old plasma during the course of a month then performed cognitive exercises to test their memory. They had to find a platform in a water maze, remember its location and find their way back to it. In a scary nod to vampire lore, the older mice rigged with younger blood outperformed the old mice with old blood in finding the platform.

The idea that youthful blood brings exuberance to older people isn't a new one. Kim Jong-il injected himself with shots of virgin blood as an anti-aging technique. Some folks in a remote part of China believe the Holy Grail elixir pumps in certain deer, so they wring blood from deer antlers and drink it hot.

Villeda's team isn't sure exactly how it works, but Villeda surmised that the young blood reinvigorates certain proteins key to stimulating new cell growth in the hippocampus that mice produce less of as they age.

So does this mean we'll start plugging our pre-teens' bloodflow into the veins of senior citizens? Probably not. Could such research eventually render a blood-inspired, anti-aging youth pill for people getting on in life? Maybe.

"Although this may suggest that Bram Stoker had ideas way ahead of his time, temporarily plumbing teenagers' blood supplies into those of their great-grandparents does not seem a particularly feasible future therapy for cognitive decline in aging," neurophysiology professor Andrew Randall told The Guardian. Rather, Villeda's blood research could help flesh out which of the thousands of elements of blood would be useful in a kind of super vitamin, Randall said.