Aging and high-fat diet

High-fat diet postpones brain aging in mice

November 6, 2014

Kerala coconuts (credit: Dan Iserman CC)

A new Danish-led research suggests that signs of brain aging can be postponed in mice if they are placed on a high-fat diet. The finding may one day allow for developing treatments for children suffering from premature aging and patients with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

The new research project, headed by the Center for Healthy Aging, University of Copenhagen, and the National Institute of Health, studied mice having a defect in their DNA repair system, resulting in a Cockayne syndrome. Putting the mice on a high-fat diet postponed aging processes such as impaired hearing and weight loss. In humans, this defect causes patients to prematurely age as children and die at an age of 10–2 years./.../