Imagine a therapy so potent a one-and-done gene injection at midlife not only keeps you alive longer, but enhances your muscles, bone density, and mind. Japanese scientist Makoto Kurosu and colleagues achieved this in mice using the anti-aging klotho gene.

Just imagine that. One shot and 24 months later, you emerge as a rejuvenated human being. Here’s what happened.

Key Findings

When the mice hit 12 months old (roughly middle-age), they received an adeno-associated virus type AAV9 carrying the short-form gene s-KL via both the bloodstream and directly into the brain. A control group got nothing. The table below summarises the high-level result:

That’s nearly half a year of extra life just from a single shot. In other words, that’s comparable to adding six human years to our life. SIX. YEARS. Just from a single shot.

Beyond Living Longer

If the cost of living longer is just more suffering, nobody would want that. But from this research, it was found that at 24 months, the treated mice experienced improved biological strengths.

1. Balance & coordination - they stayed on the spinning rod at higher speeds longer than the control mice.

2. Endurance - they held on a horizontal bar 50% longer.

3. Grip strength - they exerted an average of 20% more force across three bar pulls.

Female mice treated at 6 months also showed improvements in bone structures; more volume, thicker struts, and tighter spacing. In the hippocampus of 12-month mice, new neuron markers also significantly increased, while aging-linked inflammation and mitochondrial dysfunction returned back toward young mice profiles.

These improvements definitely begs the question.. could this be used for humans soon? It might really happen sooner than we think. AAV-based therapies are already FDA-approved for rare diseases. So scaling a klotho shot might just follow a similar path. Safety is definitely a number one priority in developing any new medicines for humans. And undoubtedly, mice don’t always predict humans, but this dose-dependent effect is quite rare in aging research. There’s also the issue of ethics. Too-good-to-be-true treatments usually raises questions like, who pays? who decides? how do we avoid longevity divides in the society? etc.

Yet even if a human klotho shot is still decades away, klotho expression is known to rise with exercise and certain diets. Combining this shot with healthy habits could be a possibility of our interim path.

So if you could get a once-and-done therapy that adds six healthy years to your life (no additional pills, no other daily routine tweaks, no blablabla), would you take it?

Think about it.

Talk soon,

Krish

Read the full research journal here.