Researchers have discovered a way to roll back your heart's age by a decade

A new gene therapy could be the cure needed to fix ailing hearts around the world and it was developed by a team of researchers in Italy and the United Kingdom. But what is this therapy and how could it help you?

In January 20203, researchers from the University of Bristol and MultiMedica Group in Italy discovered a new anti-aging gene that has proven to reduce the age of heart cells by at least a decade. 

The researchers published a study of their work and findings in the journal Cardiovascular Research, revealing that they discovered the genetics that allow some people to live beyond 100 years old according to a press release from the British Heart Foundation.

The discovery is an important one for medicine and it could help treat patients suffering from heart failure and other heart-related diseases. But can this therapy help you, and how did researchers make their discovery?

“Researchers have long suspected that people who live beyond 100 years old must have a unique genetic code that protects them from the ravages of old age,” wrote The Telegraph’s Science Editor Sarah Knapton.

“Previous research showed that carriers of a variant of the BP1FB4 gene enjoy long lifespans and fewer heart problems,” Knapton added.

In their experiments, the team of researchers found that they could successfully  inject the BP1FB4 gene into the hearts of aging mice using a virus as the delivery method. 

“They found that it rewound the heart’s biological clock by the human equivalent of 10 years,” Knapton wrote. 

The treatment also triggered regeneration of heart tissue when the new genes were introduced into damaged cells in the laboratory, something Knapton noted helped return lost function through the building of new blood vessels. 

“We have a new confirmation and enlargement of the therapeutic potential of the gene,” said the Head of MultiMedica’s laboratory Annibale Puca in a statement.

“We hope to test its effectiveness soon in clinical trials on patients with heart failure,” Puca added. 

The team of scientists studying this new heart treatment was led by professor Paolo Madeddu, a specialist in Experimental Cardio Vascular Medicine at the University of Bristol, and he explained why this research was so important. 

“The heart and blood vessel function is put at stake as we age,” Madeddu said. “However, the rate at which these harmful changes occur is different among people.”

"Smoking, alcohol, and sedentary life make the aging clock faster,” Madeddu added. “Whereas eating well and exercising delay the heart’s aging clock.” 

“Our findings confirm the healthy mutant gene can reverse the decline of heart performance in older people,” Madeddu continued.

"We are now interested in determining if giving the protein instead of the gene can also work," concluded.

Gene therapies are widely used in today’s modern medicine but Maddedu and his team believe that curing heart-related illnesses using a protein-based treatment is a far more viable option for long-term therapy. 

The research into de-aging the heart is still in its early stages according to the British Heart Foundation’s associate director professor James Leiper, the man who helped fund Maddedu’s research. 

"This is still early-stage research, but could one day provide a revolutionary way to treat people with heart failure and even stop the debilitating condition from developing in the first place.”