This topic is locked
http://www.thedailyb...ntroversy/full/
The quote below is from the last part of the article (which I found to be the most interesting part):
FYI, according to an independent test (COA is attached)
TA-65 pure capsule was verified to be have 5mg of Cycloastragenol from Astragalus:
In her study, a group of middle-aged and old mice ate food spiked with TA-65, while another group, the controls, ate plain food. (The age of the mice was intentional: TA-65 is marketed to people in their forties and up.) After three months, the scientists took blood samples, and measured the lengths of the telomeres of both groups. And sure enough: Mice that ate the TA-65 had a lower percentage of "very short telomeres." They also displayed lower insulin levels, hair regrowth, and increased skin plumping. Blasco takes these changes as evidence that TA-65 works by "turning on" telomerase.
But the changes didn't last, and overall longevity didn't change. Nor did average telomere length of the treated mice—a measure that countless previous studies have deemed the more important measure, as it's been proven to correlate with everything from reduced disease risk to lower mortality.
This last detail concerns Carol Greider, who, along with Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak, won the Nobel for the discovery of telomerase and how telomeres protect chromosomes. "There are a number of questions about the actual claims just in terms of: Is TA-65 really doing what they think it's doing?" says Greider about the new paper. She reflects, too, on an earlier study, in the journal Rejuvenation Research, showing similar results in humans (that is, T.A. Sciences customers) taking TA-65, along with vitamin supplements: The subjects' mean telomere length did not increase, but their percentage of very short telomeres appeared to decrease. "I haven't seen yet that they actually change telomere length, which is the clear real indicator," adds Greider. When I first contacted the Nobel laureate, she sent me a paper reporting that if taken in pill form, Geron's drug-in-progress from the Chinese herb (TAT2) couldn't even get to the body's cells to make a difference. "This particular drug wouldn't be one that you would give orally," says Greider. "There would need to be some sort of chemical modification… for it to actually be useful." No one connected to TA-65 will say if the supplement and TAT2 are chemically the same—"it's a trade secret," says Patton. But he assured me that results from studies on TAT2 are "definitely applicable" to TA-65. Calvin Harley, a co-author on all three papers and chief scientific officer of Telome Health Inc., a new telomere-diagnostics company based in Northern California, acknowledges that concentrations of the active anti-aging ingredient may be low. But he says the pill can still activate telomerase in human cells in the lab—and the low potency helps to reduce safety concerns. But Greider and other scientists point out both Blasco and Harley's vested interest in the pill. Harley, 58, is a pioneer in telomere research, and a rigorous scientist. But he's also an inventor of TA-65, and an adviser to both Geron and T.A. Sciences. "I hate to say it, but I really think that money corrupts," says noted cellular aging researcher Judith Campisi, pointing to the timing of the paper's release—which happens to coincide with the launch of Blasco's new company, Life Lengths, which measures people's telomeres. Campisi, based at California's Buck Institute for Research on Aging, has another concern as well: Telomerase doesn't cause cancer, but cancer cells are telomerase-rich—it's what enables them to divide indefinitely. Blasco's new paper reports that the treated mice did show an increase of liver cancer, though those levels "did not reach statistical significance."
Edited by Anthony_Loera, 13 April 2011 - 02:13 PM.
