The drug that lowers hypertension, effects. Slows Aging: The Benefits, Huge

The high blood pressure drug rilmenidine slows the aging process in worms, an effect that in humans could hypothetically help us live longer and stay healthy in our old years.

Previous research has shown that rilmenidine mimics the effects of caloric restriction at the cellular level. Reducing available energy while maintaining nutrition in the body has been shown to extend lifespan in several animals.

Whether this translates into human biology or is a potential danger to our health is a subject of ongoing debate. Finding ways to achieve the same benefits without the reduced costs of extreme calorie restriction could lead to new ways to improve health in old age.

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Study on worms

Hypertension treatment – PHOTO: Freepik

In a study published in January, young and old Caenorhabditis elegans worms treated with the drug – which is normally used to treat high blood pressure – lived longer and showed higher measures of a variety of health markers in the same manner as caloric restriction, as scientists had hoped.

“For the first time, we have been able to show in animals that rilmenidine can extend lifespan. We are now interested in exploring whether rilmenidine could have other clinical applications

The worm C. elegans is preferred for studies because many of its genes have similarities to counterparts in our genome. However, despite these similarities, it is still a fairly distant relative of humans,” said molecular biogerontologist João Pedro Magalhães of the University of Birmingham in the UK, according to Science Alert.

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Caloric restriction, benefits

Additional tests showed that gene activity associated with caloric restriction could be seen in the kidney and liver tissues of mice treated with rilmenidine. In other words, some of the changes that caloric restriction induces in the body that are thought to confer certain health benefits also occur with a high blood pressure medication that many people already take.

Another discovery was that a biological signaling receptor called nish-1 was crucial in the effectiveness of rilmenidine. This particular chemical structure could be targeted in future attempts to improve lifespan and slow the aging process.

“We found that the lifespan-extending effects of rilmenidine were abrogated when nish-1 was deleted. Critically, bringing back the nish-1 receptor reinstated the lifespan extension upon rilmenidine treatment,” the researchers explained in the paper their.

Low-calorie diets are difficult to follow and come with a variety of side effects, such as thinning hair, dizziness, and brittle bones. It’s still early days, but it’s thought that this high blood pressure drug could offer the same benefits as a low-calorie diet, while being easier on the body.

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High blood pressure medication, mild side effects

What makes rilmenidine a promising candidate as an antiaging drug is that it can be taken orally, is already widely prescribed, and its side effects are rare and relatively mild (these include palpitations, insomnia, and drowsiness in a few cases). .

There is still much work to be done to determine whether rilmenidine would work as an anti-aging drug in humans, but early signs in these tests in worms and mice are promising.

“We now know much more about what rilmenidine can do and how it works. With an aging global population, the benefits of delaying aging, even to a small degree, are immense,” said Magalhães.

The research was published in Aging Cell.

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