This Antioxidant Makes Old Blood Vessels Young Again
According to new CU Boulder research, older
adults who take a novel antioxidant that targets cellular powerhouses,
or mitochondria, have seen the aging of their blood vessels reverse by
the equivalent of 15-20 years within just six weeks.
Antioxidants
The study, published recently in the American Heart Association journal
“Hypertension,” adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests that
pharmaceutical grade nutritional
supplements could play a very important role in preventing heart disease
– the nation’s No.1 killer. It also resurrects the idea that oral
antioxidants, which have been largely dismissed as ineffective in recent
years, could reap measurable health benefits if properly targeted.
Lead author Matthew Rossman, a postdoctoral
researcher in the department of integrative physiology, says that “this
is the first clinical trial to assess the impact of a
mitochondrial-specific antioxidant on vascular function in humans. It
suggests that therapies like this may hold real promise for reducing the
risk of age-related cardiovascular disease.”
For this study, Rossman and senior author Doug Seals, director of the
Integrative Physiology of Aging Laboratory, recruited 20 healthy men and
women, aged 60-79 from the Boulder area.
Half of the participants took 20 milligrams per day of a commercially
available supplement called MitoQ. It’s made by chemically altering the
naturally-occurring antioxidant Coenzyme Q10 to make it cling to the
mitochondria inside cells. The other half took a placebo.
After a period of six weeks, the researchers assessed how well the
lining of blood vessels, or the endothelium, functioned by measuring how
much subjects’ arteries dilated with increased blood flow.
Then, after a two week period of taking nothing, the two groups
switched, with the placebo group taking the supplement, and vice versa.
The tests were repeated.
The researchers observed that when taking
the supplement, dilation of subjects’ arteries improved by 42%, making
their blood vessels, at least by that measure, look like those of
someone 15-20 years younger. An improvement of that magnitude, if
sustained, is associated with around a 13% reduction in heart disease,
Rossman said. The study also showed that the improvement in dilation was
due to a reduction in oxidative stress.
Those participants, who, under placebo conditions, had stiffer arteries –
another indication of vascular dysfunction – supplementation was
associated with reduced stiffness.
Shedding New Light on Antioxidants
Blood vessels grow stiff and have difficulty dilating with age largely
as a result of oxidative stress – the excess production of metabolic
byproducts called free radicals which can damage the endothelium and
impair its functioning. When we are young, our bodies produce enough
antioxidants to destroy those free radicals. However, as we age, the
balance tips in the other direction, as mitochondria and other cellular
processes produce excess free radicals and the body’s antioxidant
defenses can’t keep up.
Oral antioxidant supplements such as vitamin C and vitamin E fell out of
favor after a number of large studies found them to be ineffective.
This particular study breathes new life
into the discredited theory that supplementing your diet with
antioxidants can help to improve your health. It suggests that targeting
a certain source – mitochondria – might be a much better way to
decrease oxidative stress and improve cardiovascular health with aging.