In an early human trial for anti aging we have a stunning result. Age related frailty has been reversed in human beings using stem cell treatment.
The treatment derives human mesenchymal stem cells from adult donor bone marrow and in these clinical trials involves a single infusion in patients with an average age of 76. Both Phase 1 and Phase 2 human trials have demonstrated the treatment to have no adverse health effects.
In the first trial 15 frail patients received a single MSC infusion collected from bone marrow donors aged between 20 and 45 years old. Six months later all patients demonstrated improved fitness outcomes, tumor necrosis factor levels and overall quality of life.
This is a stunning result but I must not the sample size is very small. We only have 15 patients involved in this study so this is not a comprehensive study. It is an initial proof of concept study which is good enough in my opinion to be replicated with a larger study.
If these studies reveal the nature of stem cells then perhaps in 20 or 30 years we will have an effective treatment to slow or possibly even reverse the aging process. Because these trials are expensive progress tends to be slow so this is an area where crowd funding and even the model from ICOs makes a lot of sense. Today most science is funded by large companies but patients in my opinion should be allowed to invest in the health of their future selves by understanding their own genetic vulnerabilities, what is aging them, and have then the ability to fund research into curing their ailments.
Currently we do not have good measures for biological age. We merely have a number of how many years a person has been alive and then doctors estimate based on averages and population statistics about what diseases a person might be prone to develop. More accurate would be if we have a true biological measure of aging and personalized medicine where doctors would look for and prevent disease based on the genes and biological age of the patient.