Fasting-mimicking diet causes hepatic and blood markers changes indicating reduced biological age and disease risk
Nat Commun, 2024. Brandhorst S, et al.
Funding and competing interests (as published with the paper): The experimental FMD was provided by L-Nutra Inc. USC has licensed intellectual property to L-Nutra that is under study in this research. As part of this license agreement, the University has the potential to receive royalty payments from L-Nutra. V.D.L. and T.E.M., who have equity interest in L-Nutra, did not participate in the collection and analysis of the data. One-hundred percent of V.D.L.’s equity will be assigned to charitable organizations and companies including the Create Cures Foundation. The remaining authors declare no competing interests.
- Study type
- Human study (exploratory analysis of clinical trial samples)
- Journal
- Nat Commun
- Published
- 2024
- Authors
- Brandhorst S, et al.
- DOI
- 10.1038/s41467-024-45260-9
- PubMed ID
- 38378685
Summary
This paper reports a secondary, exploratory analysis of blood samples from an earlier randomized clinical trial in adults who completed three consecutive monthly cycles of a Fasting Mimicking Diet (FMD), with a second clinical study used to check the results. The analysis looked at markers of insulin resistance, liver fat (measured by MRI), immune cell ratios, and a validated biological-age score.
The authors reported that three consecutive monthly FMD cycles were associated with reduced insulin resistance and other pre-diabetes markers, lower liver fat, and a higher ratio of lymphoid to myeloid immune cells, which the authors describe as an indicator of immune system age. Using the validated biological-age measure, they reported a median reduction of approximately 2.5 years in biological age after the cycles, independent of weight loss, with nearly identical findings in the second study.
This is an exploratory, after-the-fact analysis of existing trial samples, not a new controlled trial designed to test biological age directly, and the authors describe the findings as 'initial support.' The paper also cites earlier mouse research as background; the biological-age findings themselves come from the human blood samples.
An exploratory analysis of blood samples from completed human studies, not a new trial.
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