Cutting-edge science seeking treatment for aging itself is one good thing to come out of deadly pandemic – Regina Leader-Post

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In fact, some scientists are calling COVID the worlds newest disease of aging, joining traditional culprits like cancer, heart ailments and Alzheimers.

More intriguingly, and hopefully, Farrelly and others say the pandemic is a compelling reason to double down on a fascinating new domain of medical research. Its goal, rather than finding cures for individual diseases, is to treat the aging process itself.

Old age makes humans vulnerable to a range of killers, now including the novel coronavirus. Finding a way to slow down or reverse the aging process will protect people not just from traditional foes like diabetes and hypertension, but infectious diseases such as COVID-19, the thinking goes.

Its a very hot area, said Steven Austad, a biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. And COVID-19, he said, is focusing attention on it.

I think of it as 21st century medicine, as opposed to 20th century medicine, in which there were these silos of people who treat your heart, people who treat your lungs, people who treat your brain, Austad said. (Now) theyve started talking to each other.

Targeting aging, argues Farrelly, ought to be the major public health goal of the 21st century.

Nobody has run away from aging by dieting and exercising ... To change the paradigm, we need to look at pharmaceuticals

What anti-aging scientists are pursuing is not the lifestyle fixes long proven to lessen disease risk, like regular exercise and a healthy diet. Instead, theyre searching for drugs and dietary supplements that could actually tweak human biology to better withstand the ravages of time.

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Cutting-edge science seeking treatment for aging itself is one good thing to come out of deadly pandemic - Regina Leader-Post