Pregnancy regenerates liver and other organs

[Guest guest]

Interesting article published this morning on

ISRAEL21c <http://www.israel21c.org/>

We men already don't live as long as women, and now this.

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Researchers at Jerusalem's Hebrew University are

mimicking processes that occur in pregnancy and

helping older animals' liver cells to regenerate better and faster.

An Israeli professor has found evidence that

pregnancy can have a restorative effect on damaged organs.

It's common to associate pregnancy with the

maladies that may accompany it. There's fatigue,

morning sickness, weight gain - and in some cases

diabetes. But for all the complaints, one Israeli

professor has found new evidence that pregnancy

may be a source of the elusive " fountain of

youth " that all drug developers would love to find.

In a new study, Prof. Yehudit Bergman and her

colleagues at the Hebrew University (HU) Medical

School report finding a process that occurs only

in pregnant animals that appears to have a

restorative effect on damaged organs, in this

particular study on the liver. The news has been

reported in the journal

<http://genesdev.cshlp.org/search?fulltext=Bergman & submit=yes>Genes

& Development.

Using animal models, they applied their findings

to two-year-old geriatric mice and found that the

same processes that appear to trigger quicker

healing of liver damage in pregnant mice, also

work in older ones who are not pregnant. Using a

novel formula to trigger the effect of pregnancy,

what the researchers believe they have discovered

may lead to a new class of compounds that could

heal a number of organs that degenerate over time as we age.

It is Bergman's goal to adapt this trigger for

regeneration to more organs, but she cautions

that the drug development process may take a decade or more.

Triggering the regeneration process

Bergman tells ISRAEL21c that her research on mice

shows that pregnancy does good things for the

body. " In pregnancy, regeneration of the liver is

faster and better than when the same mouse is not

pregnant. Moreover, we understand some of what's

happening in pregnancy - in its cells, the

hepatocytes and why they regenerate better.

" Once we understood the signaling pathway that

instructs the cell to do what it does, we

imitated the same kinds of signaling effects in

aged mice who were not pregnant, " she explains.

This approach led the research team to understand

why the liver regenerates itself in pregnancy.

The team, which included Dr. Yuval Gielchinsky

and Dr. Eli Pikarsky from Hadassah Medical

School, Prof. Neri Laufer, from Hadassah

Hospital, and Efi Weitman, Dr. Rinat Abramovitch

and Dr. Zvi Granot, all affiliated with the

Hebrew University of Jerusalem, found that during

pregnancy, liver cells regenerated better and in

less time than during periods when the mice were not pregnant.

In non-pregnant mice, one sees normal cell

division. From one cell, you get two, as the

liver attempts to heal itself. " When the animal

is pregnant, " Bergman found, " the liver gets

bigger because each cell gets larger. It becomes a bigger liver. "

While under normal circumstances an enlarged

liver is a sign of liver damage, in pregnant

animals different processes are at work. The

growth is not caused by increased blood volume,

which is a normal effect of pregnancy.

" This wouldn't be a good sign, unless we knew

that the liver was working in the normal fashion

and regenerating itself faster, " explains

Bergman. " Once we understood how this happens

during pregnancy we turned to very old mice -

those that were two years old - whose [liver]

regeneration process is not as good as that of young mice. "

Get pregnant, live longer?

And that's when the researchers had their Eureka

moment. " We mimicked the liver regeneration of

pregnancy in old mice, " Bergman reports. With

their new understanding of the process, they gave

a group of older mice drugs that mimic the state

of pregnancy. They had determined that the repair

mechanism was a kind of switch in the cells, and

they developed a molecule that could trigger that switch.

Like any serious scientist, Bergman hesitates to

jump to conclusions. " The fountain of youth? It

is quite novel research, but this is just

research in pre-pre-clinical stages, " she points out.

However, the research is her raison d'être. " The

dream is to help people, to aid older people to

regenerate their liver and we are looking into

achieving the same goals for other organs in the

body, " she says. These could include the heart, lungs and kidneys.

So is pregnancy the elixir for extended youth?

" The only evidence I have for that is the study I

have published, " says Bergman, but adds: " Friends

I have who are gynecologists do say pregnancy is good for the body. "