7 ms·
Pomegranate compound with anti-aging effects passes human trial
- Circuits 7y agoSo there are products on the market already or no one has a product on the market yet?
- arkades 7y agoPhase 1 study. Years from market.
- ConcernedCoder 7y ago...or we could just start eating Pomegranates?
- pgtan 7y agowho doesn't?
- DoofusOfDeath 7y agoWe can "just" start eating Pomegranates, absolutely. Personally, I find them pretty tasty, and they remind me of the Greek myth of Persephone's abduction by Hades. So I'm all for them. But how much you'd need to eat for a clinically noteworthy benefit is the question. That's what the follow-on studies are for.
- arkades 7y agoIf they’ve raised capital for a series of clinical trials, you can reasonably assume the doses at which they expect to see clinical effects are much higher than you’re likely to get just from food ingestion - otherwise their competition would just be pomegranate juice pills or something, sold as a food supplement and requiring no trials of safety or efficacy. They’d never have been able to raise a cent. In other words, no one would fund a penicillin trial if they thought people could get by eating moldy bread from GNC.
- derefr 7y agoI don’t know. The dose of broccoli you need to see clinical effects from the sulforaphane it contains is extremely high, but concentrated sulforaphane capsules are sold as a food supplement without needing to go through any FDA process. What criterion does the FDA use to distinguish a food-derived chemical that needs to be treated as a drug, from one that’s still just seen as an extract/essence of the food itself, and therefore can be treated as a supplement? It seems very opaque to me.
- DSingularity 7y agoThe article states that Urolithin-A is not produced by everybody. That acid in these fruits needs to be converted to UA in our gut. So no, it’s not always as simple as eating these fruits.
- strainer 7y agoHowever at the same time, the gut is so confoundingly complicated that substances in concentrated tablet form are often less readily absorbed than less concentrated amounts occurring in food.
- egypturnash 7y agoFirst we should see if this study was funded by that one giant pomegranate farm in California. If Wikipedia is correct, we should start eating yellow raspberries instead; they offer about seven times as much of the compound this study is investigating the effects of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolithin_A#Dietary_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolithin_A#Dietary_sources
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gpm 7y agoQuite possibly pomegranate... It's unclear how much it has though.
- akimball 7y agoThere are raspberries and pomegranates on the market, yes.
- dannykwells 7y agoJust fyi, the primary endpoint was safety, so to pass it just needed to not be toxic. The secondary endpoint was a biomarker of mitochondrial health. So no clinical effects are included here.
- strainer 7y agoThat seems overly dismissive of the finding on mitochondrial activity: " The team then assessed the efficacy of UA by looking at cellular and mitochondrial health biomarkers in the participants' blood and muscle tissue. The results were compelling: UA stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis—the process by which cells increase mitochondrial mass—in the same way as regular exercise. UA is the only known compound that re-establishes cells' ability to recycle defective mitochondria. "
- fabian2k 7y agoBiomarkers are not a clinical effect, this doesn't tell you whether this compound has any anti-aging effects. This is still an early point in the development of a drug.
- dannykwells 7y agoExactly. Promising biology != clinical activity.
- dspillett 7y agoNot that this will stop every cosmetics line having a pomegranate version with adverts extolling "proven by science!" in a matter of months, if they don't already have one nearly ready to ship.
- strainer 7y agoWhat particular anti-aging effects do you regard? Are not improvements in mitochondrial health practical indicators of anti-aging as improvements in skin elasticity or bone strength?
- arkades 7y ago1) Metabolic side effects tend to be slow and subtle. Vioxx caused increased heart attacks over time. Passing a phase 1 safety trial is fine and dandy, but it’s a far cry short of long-term safety in a drug targeting metabolism, and it’s not even where most drugs fail. 2) Lab evidence for a biomarker for a metabolic process is so far short of evidence of clinical improvement that it’s a joke. I will never stop deriding studies that point to proxy markers (or in this case, proxy proxy markers) as evidence of benefit. This has been proven to be inadequate so many times, across so many different studies, that it’s just not worth talking about anymore. This is a perfectly fine and valid phase 1 study. It says “we have identified a dose range that doesn’t immediately sicken people.” That’s what phase 1 trials do. The rest is press release hype.
- utopcell 7y agoDo all "we have identified a dose range that doesn’t immediately sicken people” studies make it to Nature journals ?
- danieltillett 7y agoOnly if the right people were involved in the study.
- looeee 7y agoOr if it's to do with curing aging, cancer, HIV, or heart disease.
- arkades 7y agoNature is a high impact factor, prestigious journal. It’s million sub-journals, like Nature Metabolism ... well, vary. A lot. They mostly coast on papa’s brand recognition. Nature Endocrinology Reviews is a relatively ranking journal in endocrinology - roughly second place, by impact factor. This didn’t get published there. Nature Metabolism was only opened in 2017, as an online-only journal. It doesn’t even rank in the top 50 for endocrine and metabolism journals - granted, that may be in part because it doesn’t even have an impact factor yet (calculating impact factor requires two years of publication history preceding the year being calculated for. In 2020, we should see a 2019 IF.) So, one can say they might be enormously prestigious, and we just won’t see until 2020. It’s more likely that people aren’t bothering publishing their best articles in a 0 IF journal, because in academic circles the Nature Subbrand is recognized as not inherently meaningful, so the 0 IF pub just hurts (unless you think your pub would otherwise end up in an unimpressive journal, and you want to gamble that the future IF will be higher and pay off.)
- Neil44 7y agoThe Wikipedia page for the compound being discussed has a table of food and drink sources for it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolithin_A https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolithin_A Not everyone’s body can create UA from these natural sources so the idea is to just make a pill for it that will work on anyone.
- openureyes 7y agoPomegranate fasting and/or Aronia ("chokeberry") fasting (30 to 60 days) are incredible healers of all "diseases" known to man kind. Do your own research.
- TheKIngofBelAir 7y agopomegranates and raspberries as well "A compound called urolithin A (UA) was the focus of the study, after previous experiments with it showed promise in extending the lifespans of worms and mice. The compound appears to fight aging by improving the function of mitochondria – the energy-producing part of a cell – in a way similar to the benefits of exercise. While it's not found naturally in any known food, biomolecules in fruits like pomegranates and raspberries do break down into UA in the human gut" Here's the study https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-019-0073-4 https://sci-hub.tw/https://www.nature.com/articles/s42255-01... Yellow raspberries seems to contain bigger amounts of ellagic acid than pomegranates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolithin_A#Dietary_sources https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolithin_A#Dietary_sources
- orbifold 7y agoThere was a pretty nice portrait in the California Sunday magazine of a billionaire (Resnick) couple who owns a lot of land and water and are producing different kinds of citrus fruits and nuts in the south of California: https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-dust https://story.californiasunday.com/resnick-a-kingdom-from-du.... Lynda Resnick has been heavily promoting pomegranate juice. Of course they have a lot to gain, because they are one of the leading branded producers of pomegranate juice. With these types of studies it is always a good idea to follow the money.
- clairity 7y agoshe's the first person i thought of when i read the title of this story (i saw her speak once).
- fasteo 7y agoJust finished reading the paper, particularly interested in the mitochondrial biogenesis part. They make several comparisons with exercise adaptations, and the authors conclude: >>> The present study reveals that UA induces a molecular signature response, in both the plasma and skeletal muscle of humans, resembling that observed as a consequence of a regular exercise regimen. The also selected sedentary people only (from their participant inclusion criteria). Note that this is somehow normal: I have been rejected twice in 2 clinical trials for mitochondrial myopathy because I was too fit. >> body mass index 18-32 kg/m2 and demonstrated sedentary behavior All the authors declare a conflict of interest with Amazentis. Nestlé just signed a partnership agreement with them [1] to help them develop the product. I guess they are actively seeking the exercise in a pill product. If they make it, it would be one of the biggest blockbusters in the history of medicine. [1] http://pdf.amazentis.com/pdf/Nestl%C3%A9_Health_Science_&_Amazentis_Press_Release_April_2_2019.pdf http://pdf.amazentis.com/pdf/Nestl%C3%A9_Health_Science_&_Am...
- dractori 7y agoIs there a way to tell who funded this study?
- ry_ry 7y agoNestlé signed a deal with them at the beginning of April, according to TheKingOfBelAir's comment above, which would lead me to believe they were at least involved with the study. Link here, to save searching. http://pdf.amazentis.com/pdf/Nestl%C3%A9_Health_Science_&_Amazentis_Press_Release_April_2_2019.pdf http://pdf.amazentis.com/pdf/Nestl%C3%A9_Health_Science_&_Am...