I suspect writer might be an ImmInst member or at least has been following discussions very carefully, nevertheless it is interesting a random post at ImmInst got quoted as I discovered this disussed on the Los Angeles Gerontology Research Group mailing list.
http://www.world-sci...resveratrol.htm
"Youth” pills, hawked online, win over top scientists
Feb. 8, 2007
By Jack Lucentini
For centuries, shady salesmen have pushed nostrums claimed to conquer that eternal scourge, aging. Virtually all have been garbage. China’s king Zhao Mei may have even died from his own “immortality pills” 2,000 years ago, archaeologists say.
Pills on the market are labeled as containing from less than 5 mg to as much as 250 mg of resveratrol in its active form. Even that is around one-sixth what an average-weight person would have to take daily to get doses comparable to those used in mouse life-extension studies. But many users are satisfied with taking smaller amounts in order to play it safe and save money.
But one brand of pills hawked on the Internet as containing “youth-prolonging” molecules has a curious distinction.
A Harvard Medical School biologist who is a leading expert on aging takes them daily, persuaded by his own research that they may work, according to people familiar with his activities.
A small but growing band of people, hearing of that, has followed his lead in hopes of living longer and more vigorously—as have a diverse array of animals on which the pills’ key ingredient has been tested.
A Nobel-prize winning physicist now counts himself among the users.
But the biologist also once served as consultant to the pills’ maker. Questions about that relationship persist—some of which, posed to the manufacturer this week, provoked fury, but no answer.
The capsules in question are called Longevinex (longevinex.com).
The Harvard researcher, David Sinclair, has said in interviews that he takes supplements containing the ingredient, called resveratrol. But he wouldn’t specify which of the more than 20 available brands he takes, or advise their use to others. The medical school’s rules forbid doing that, an article in the June 22, 2004 Harvard Gazette said.
Nonetheless, three people familiar with Sinclair’s activities said his brand of choice has been Longevinex.
Grapes and red wine also contain resveratrol (see chart), but far too little for these products to confer the dramatic lifespan boost seen in animal studies, researchers say. Nonetheless, even moderate alcohol drinking is tied to slightly higher lifespan in humans, according to a study in the Dec. 11-25 issue of the journal Archives of Internal Medicine.
But pills may have much more resveratrol, so some people want them—though their effects are little studied, and how the substance works is still debated.
Confusion has set in among potential buyers of these supplements, thanks to a slew of competing and contradictory claims from the manufacturers. The silence from Sinclair, perhaps the best-known researcher of resveratrol’s effects, hasn’t helped. He declined to comment for this article.
Enigmatic tests
A few years ago, Sinclair conducted tests that suggested Longevinex worked far better than a dozen competing products, according to a news article in the Feb. 27, 2004 issue of the research journal Science. Details of the results haven’t been published or opened to the wider scientific community’s scrutiny.
Around then, Sinclair has said he also served as a consultant to Longevinex’s maker; all this took place during the product’s development, according to the company president. But Sinclair announced in a mailing at the end of 2003 that had he cut the tie because the company had used his name in publicity. He later launched his own company, Sirtris, to develop a related prescription product.
Nonetheless, he keeps taking the prescription-free Longevinex, according to an email attributed to him by Justin Loew, treasurer of the Immortality Institute, a San Francisco-based non-profit group that promotes anti-aging research.
Last November, Loew said in an online forum that Sinclair had emailed him: “I take 4 pills of longevinex with bfast and 4 at dinner, but I don’t recommend anyone else take any resveratrol pills until we know more.” (Note: late last month, the manufacturer raised the amount of resveratrol per capsule, so Sinclair’s reported eight pills would be equivalent to 3.2 now. Either way, his reported regimen amounts to about 320 mg daily. Three pills daily would cost about $3.50 a day currently.)
Bill Sardi, president of Resveratrol Partners LLC, maker of Longevinex, confirmed Loew’s account. Sinclair told The New York Times in early November that he has used resveratrol for three years—about the same length of time Longevinex has existed. He added that his wife, parents, and ‘‘half my lab’’ of two dozen members pop resveratrol too.
To some observers, the bets Sinclair makes for his own body are far more persuasive than any recommendations or non-recommendations he might have for the rest of us. “Sinclair is a Harvard dude, okay?” one user of the Web forum wrote. “We can debate all day, but the proof that the guy takes the stuff is good enough for me.”
A similar sentiment, expressed more reservedly, came from a 2004 Nobel Laureate in physics, Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass. “I take it,” he said of Longevinex. That Sinclair uses it was “certainly one of the things that impressed me,” he added, as did a recent study on resveratrol by Sinclair in the research journal Nature. While not a biologist, “I know how to read critically,” Wilczek added; as far as the pills go, “there doesn’t seem to be much possible downside, and the upside is very considerable.”
Not everyone agrees.
A downside?
“The right place now with resveratrol is to say that this is really intriguing data, but mice aren’t humans,” Brent Bauer, director of the complementary and integrative medicine program at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., told The Wall Street Journal in late November, after the latest spate of major resveratrol studies were published.
“Do we know the right dosage? No. Do we know the side effects? No. Do we know if there are potential contaminants? No,” said Tod Cooperman, president of consumerlab.com, a provider of independent test results, in a National Public Radio interview in November. “Personally, I would wait.”
Resveratrol has been tied to both greater lifespan and vigor in animals. Since 2003, it has been found to extend lifespan in worms and flies by nearly 30 percent; fish and yeast by almost 60 percent; and obese mice by an estimated 15 percent, though that study, by Sinclair and colleagues, is unfinished.
Hope that humans might benefit similarly stems from the consistency of the animal results, and the fact that humans and animals are genetically closely related. Ninety-nine percent of genes are similar in mice and humans, for example.
But resveratrol’s effects on human lifespan are unknown because our relatively long lifespans make studies difficult. Some anecdotal reports have sufficed to raise eyebrows, though. Sardi said some users of his product have reported some reversal of hair graying. An editor of World Science (which has no ties to anyone selling resveratrol) tried it and experienced the same thing.
As far as ill effects, researchers say the jury is out, but nothing has raised alarms yet. “About 10,000 people in this country take this product with no apparent side effects,” the Harvard Gazette article quoted Sinclair saying.
Compared to what Sinclair reportedly takes, fish and mice in the longevity studies got doses roughly five to seven times higher—adjusting for their weight—with no reported problems. In rat studies, researchers found that they had to multiply those higher doses again, by somewhere between 10 and 30, for harmful effects to become evident.
But no long-term safety studies have been done in humans, or with specific commercial products such as Longevinex. Sardi recommends it not be taken by growing children or pregnant women, or simultaneously with other medications.
Just why Sinclair’s tests evidently favored Sardi’s product is unclear.
Sardi says it’s because his capsules are specially made to keep the molecule stable, and competitors’ aren’t. But a June 2005 study in the journal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Bulletin tested five competing brands and found that they contained close to the labeled amounts of resveratrol; the makers apparently hadn’t lied about the content. Sardi counters that his and Sinclair’s tests assessed not only the resveratrol content, but its biological activity. The issue remains unresolved.
James Betz, a competitor of Sardi’s, said he believes Sardi and Sinclair may have, or have had, a “financial relationship.”
Sinclair wrote in his 2003 mailing that he “never received any money” from Sardi’s firm. But he didn’t say whether he might have been compensated in other ways, such as discounted pills. Was he? Sardi, asked that this week, became enraged and refused to answer. He referred all further questions to a lawyer, who also didn’t respond. Sinclair, contacted again, remained silent.
Betz, general manager of Biotivia Bioceuticals (bioflu.com), said Sardi’s reaction suggests he has paid Sinclair somehow. “Maybe there was stock in the company, or something else that would eventually translate to money,” he said. Sardi said late last year that while Sinclair doesn’t recommend his product publicly, he has as a courtesy mentioned the brand to newspaper interviewers.
The other marketers of resveratrol supplements include Biotivia, which boasts the highest resveratrol content per pill; and—among those whose resveratrol content was verified in the 2005 study—Food Science of Vermont (fslabs.com); Nutraceutical (nutraceutical.com) and Source Naturals (sourcenaturals.com).
See also relevant commentary to this piece on the Full Member forum:
http://www.imminst.o...&t=14447&hl=&s=
