Fat Hormone may Contribute to Longevity

Using a mouse model of longevity, Terry Combs and colleagues report that changes in metabolism can indeed increase longevity. They demonstrated that long-lived Snell dwarf mice burn less glucose and more fatty acids during periods of fasting, and as a result produce fewer free radicals.

The key to this switch may be adiponectin, a hormone produced by fat cells that helps lower glucose production and stimulates cells to use fat for energy instead. The researchers found that Snell mice had three times as much adiponectin in their blood as control mice; Snell mice also had fewer triglycerides in their cells, indicative of higher fat metabolism.

The benefit of burning fats instead of glucose for energy is that it produces fewer oxygen radicals which can damage cells and exacerbate the effects of aging. Confirming this, Combs and colleagues found far less free radical damage, measured as the frequency of a chemical modification on protein known as carbonyl groups, in Snell mice than controls. -American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology