Have we found the solution to ageing?

Two substances found naturally in the body could reverse the ageing process when taken as supplements. Anne Woodham explains the research

Can health supplements acetyl-L-carnitine and alpha-lipoic acid do to humans what they did to ageing rats? Californian researchers were amazed when they fed these dietary supplements that can be bought in high street health shops to laboratory animals.

'With the two supplements together, these old rats got up and did the macarena,' said Bruce N. Ames, Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. 'The brain looks better, they are full of energy - everything we looked at looks more like a young animal.'

Within hours of news of Ames' results appearing in the media in February, a Richmond health store had sold out of the supplements. A spokesperson for health shop chain Holland & Barrett reported a nationwide run on stocks.

According to Professor Ames, evidence suggests that the deterioration of mitochondria, our cells' energy power packs, is as an important cause of ageing. Destructive molecules called free radicals that are produced during normal metabolism (chemical processes that convert nutrients into energy and keep us alive) are thought to cause this deterioration.

Acetyl-L-carnitine and alpha-lipoic acid are chemicals found naturally in body cells. Alpha-lipoic acid is an antioxidant that destroys free radicals. Acetyl-L-carnitine is a protein that boosts the action of an enzyme (carnitine acetyltransferase) that fuels mitochondria and becomes less active with age.

Professor Ames and his team reckoned that combining the two as supplements would deliver a two-pronged punch to ageing cells. Their studies, published in the US science journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in February 2002, showed they were right. 'Each chemical solves a different problem,' said Ames. 'The two together are better than either one alone.'