by MALCOLM RITTER
Posted: 05/04/2014 9:55 pm EDT
Updated: 05/04/2014 9:59 pm EDT
NEW YORK (AP) — If Mickey Mouse is feeling his age at 86, scientists may have found just the tonic: the blood of younger mice.
Older mice got stronger, exercised longer and performed better mentally after they were injected with blood from young mice, or even just with a substance that’s more abundant in younger blood.
Someday, if more research goes well, this may lead to a way to treat some infirmities of old age in people. In the meantime, scientists have a warning for do-it-yourselfers.
“Don’t try this at home,” said Saul Villeda of the University of California, San Francisco, an author of one of three papers published online Sunday by the journals Nature Medicine and Science.
He worked with mice that were roughly the equivalent of people in their 20s and 60s. Researchers repeatedly injected the older mice with blood from either the younger animals or other aged mice. Those that got the young blood did better in learning and memory tests than the mice given the older blood. For example, they performed better at recalling where to find a submerged platform in a maze.