In a recent study at Baylor College of Medicine, researchers found that supplementation with GlyNAC could improve many age-associated defects in older people to improve muscle strength and cognition, and promote healthy aging.
They found that older people taking GlyNAC for 24 weeks saw improvements in many characteristic defects of aging, including oxidative stress, inflammation, insulin resistance, body fat, muscle strength, gait speed, exercise capacity and cognitive function.
The study is published in Clinical and Translational Medicine. One author is endocrinologist Dr. Rajagopal Sekhar.
GlyNAC is a combination of glycine and N-acetylcysteine as precursors of the natural antioxidant glutathione.
Previous studies showed that supplementing HIV patients with GlyNAC improved multiple deficits associated with premature aging observed in those patients.
In this study, the team wanted to understand the effects of GlyNAC supplementation on many age-associated defects in older adults.
They tested eight older adults 70 to 80 years of age, comparing them with gender-matched younger adults between 21 and 30 years old.
The older participants took GlyNAC for 24 weeks, and then stopped it for 12 weeks.
The researchers measured glutathione in red-blood cells, mitochondrial fuel-oxidation, plasma biomarkers of oxidative stress and oxidant damage, inflammation, endothelial function, glucose and insulin, gait-speed, muscle strength, exercise capacity, cognitive tests, gene-damage, glucose-production and muscle-protein breakdown rates and body composition.
The team found after taking GlyNAC for 24 weeks, all these defects in older adults improved and some reversed to the levels found in young adults.
The researchers also determined that older adults tolerated GlyNAC well for 24 weeks. The benefits, however, declined after stopping GlyNAC supplementation for 12 weeks.
The overall findings suggest that GlyNAC supplementation could be a simple and viable method to promote and improve healthy aging in older adults.
In the future, the team will test whether GlyNAC supplementation could improve defects linked to cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease and in MCI, and possibly improve cognitive function.
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