While the liver is one of the body's most resilient organs, it is still vulnerable to the ravages of stress and aging, leading to disease, severe scarring and failure. A Duke Health research team now might have found a way to turn back time and restore the liver. In experiments using mice and liver tissue from humans, the researchers identified how the aging process prompts certain liver cells to die off.
They were then able to reverse the process in the animals with an investigational drug. The finding, which appears in the journal Nature Aging , holds high promise for the millions of people who have some degree of liver damage – livers that are essentially old due to the metabolic stresses of high cholesterol, obesity, diabetes or other factors. Our study demonstrates that aging is at least partially reversible.
You are never too old to get better." Anna Mae Diehl, M.D.
, senior author, the Florence McAlister Distinguished Professor of Medicine at the Duke University School of Medicine Diehl and colleagues set out to understand how non-alcoholic liver disease develops into a severe condition called cirrhosis, in which scarring can lead to organ failure. Aging is a key risk factor for cirrhosis among those who have been diagnosed with non-alcoholic liver disease, known as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease, or MASLD. One in three adults worldwide have the disease.
Studying the livers of mice, the researchers identified a genetic signature distinct to o.
