London - With interest in vampires at an all-time high thanks to the Twilight saga, a grisly experiment has revealed that there may be a scientific explanation for their most anti-social trait - drinking blood to stay eternally youthful.
A new study has shown that blood contains substances that control the ageing of the brain.
Administered at low levels, these substances even appear to rejuvenate the mind. A team of US researchers from Stanford University connected the circulatory systems of old and young mice, so the blood from the two mingled together.
They then looked at the effect of the “young” blood on the older brains, and vice versa.
Remarkably, the old mice with their transfusion of young blood produced three times as many new brain cells as usual. Conversely, young mice exposed to “old” blood made fewer new brain cells than expected, the journal Nature reports.
Further experiments showed that something in the plasma, the liquid in which the blood cells float, seemed to be responsible. If such substances could be isolated, the researchers believe they could provide treatments for Alzheimer’s and to reverse the ageing process on the brain. - Daily Mail