Human brain: Hypothalamus as control center for ageing identified but risk lies in follow up

Hypothalamus region of the brain is the control centre of ageing. Dongsheng Cai from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York has discovered yet another vital duty on the hypothalamus’ already impressive CV—it’s a command centre that coordinates the ageing process across the entire body. By manipulating proteins within it, Cai managed to speed up or slow down the pace of ageing in mice. 

The brain's mechanism for controlling ageing
has been discovered – and manipulated to
shorten and extend the lives of mice.
Drugs to slow ageing could follow

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http://www.newscientist.com/section/science-news

Cai’s team found that the ageing hypothalamus builds up more microglia—a dedicated brand of inflammatory immune cells in the brain, which destroy infectious microbes and vacuum up debris. They also produce NF-kB, which tells neighbouring neurons to do the same. This flood of NF-kB switches off the gene for a hormone called GnRH.

That’s a surprise—GnRH is best known as a reproductive hormone. It controls the development of our sexual organs and the making of eggs and sperm. 

Human hypothalamus 

(animation, shown in red)

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Howard Chang from Stanford University says, “If reproduced by others, this work provides further evidence that aging is a regulated rather than a [random] process.” 

But let’s recap what we already know, just to appreciate how bizarre this chain of results is. You have a life-support centre in the brain, a protein that coordinates the immune system, and a hormone that controls our sex organs, all working together to influence… the pace of ageing?

This research follow up may bring some serious consequences as: 

Given the pathway, we would not be surprised if a large experiment showed a significant increase of cancer risk. NF-kB is a well known cancer pathway, lower levels of NF-kB1 allow cancer cells to avoid cell death (apoptosis). I imagine this works along the same lines.  

Following sites referred thankfully and reference for further detail:

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/01/almond-sized-brain-region-is-control-centre-for-ageing/

mb, may1, 2013 on http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/05/01/almond-sized-brain-region-is-control-centre-for-ageing/

http://www.newscientist.com/section/science-news

wikipedia.org