Reversing Liver Damage

The liver is one of the body's most resilient organs, but it is still vulnerable to disease and failure as it ages. New research from Duke University (US) may have found a way to turn back time and restore the liver to youthful health. In experiments using mice and liver tissue from humans, they were able to identify how the aging process causes certain liver cells to die. First they discovered genes in the livers of older mice, that are programmed to kill cells as the mouse ages. This cell death process is dependent on having iron in the cells. So they gave the aging mice a drug which blocks the action of iron in cells, and the results were startling! The livers of the mice became biologically young and healthy. The next step was to see if this would work on human livers that were showing signs of deterioration from age. They found that human cells have the same genetic signature, and are programmed to degenerate in the same way using iron. The next phase is to test a similar drug to block iron in human livers. “Our study demonstrates that aging of the liver is at least partially reversible,” said leader of the research Dr Anna Mae Diehl. “You are never too old to get better.”