Mitochondrial Damage: Can it be repaired?

Yes.

Drugs designed to target one aspect of aging also seem to help repair DNA damage and regulate gene activity, preventing them from going haywire with the stresses of time.

"In principle, we now could have a way of reversing the effects of aging," said David Sinclair, a Harvard University gerontologist and co-founder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a company best-known for its development of an experimental drug called resveratrol.
Resveratrol and similar compounds activate an enzyme called SIRT1. The enzyme rejuvenates mitochondria, the machines that power our cells. Mitochondrial breakdown has been associated with many age-related diseases, including heart disease, diabetes and dementia. Several labs in addition to Sirtris are researching compounds that target mitochondria.
The new findings suggest that SIRT1 fixes DNA in addition to mitochondria.

Sinclair's team found that unless SIRT1 enzymes gathered at sites where DNA had started to unravel, other DNA repair proteins failed to arrive. This allowed damage to progress, eventually causing dormant genes to come alive, a process called deregulation.
Some researchers think gene deregulation is a cause of aging: As cells get older, they produce less SIRT1, ostensibly becoming less able to repair faulty DNA and suppress the dormant genes.

But in mice either given resveratrol or genetically engineered to produce extra SIRT1 on their own, repairs went smoothly and quickly.
"One idea of why we age is that DNA becomes damaged or mutated," said Sinclair, lead author of the research published Wednesday in Cell. "But perhaps the main culprit is the effect of genes switching on and off, and that should be reversible."

Link


What to do? Detailed information for chronic fatigue patients but useful and informative for all to follow is in a pdf - here.
http://www.ijcem.com/files/IJCEM812001.pdf

Supplements of Alpha-lipoic acid, L-carnitine and Co-enzyme Q10 to restore mitrochondrial function http://articles.latimes.com/2008/aug/25/health/he-skeptic25

Scholarly articles on ALCAR treatment can be accessed at Mitochondrial.net, here.

One protocol in an individual with mitochondrial disease called for the following:
Alpha-lipoic Acid (ALA) 300 mg 2x/day
Co-Q-10 200 mg 2x/day
Creatine Monohydrate powder 2.5 gm 2x/day

Antidepressants in the water? Don't try to make wine

Nowadays we hear a lot about antidepressants and other drug residues in water. Here's an unexpected side effect: Antidepressants kill yeast cell mitochondria. That's bad news for fans of wine and beer - or baking.

"Since the first mitochondrial dysfunction was described in the 1960s, the medicine has advanced in its understanding the role mitochondria play in health and disease. Damage to mitochondria is now understood to play a role in the pathogenesis of a wide range of seemingly unrelated disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disease, dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, migraine headaches, strokes, neuropathic pain, Parkinson’s disease, ataxia, transient ischemic attack, cardiomyopathy, coronary artery disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, retinitis pigmentosa, diabetes, hepatitis C, and primary biliary cirrhosis. Medications have now emerged as a major cause of mitochondrial damage, which may explain many adverse effects. All classes of psychotropic drugs have been documented to damage mitochondria, as have stain medications, analgesics such as acetaminophen, and many others. While targeted nutrient therapies using antioxidants or their prescursors (e. g., N-acetylcysteine) hold promise for improving mitochondrial function, there are large gaps in our knowledge. The most rational approach is to understand the mechanisms underlying mitochondrial damage for specific medications and attempt to counteract their deleterious effects with nutritional therapies. This article reviews our basic understanding of how mitochondria function and how medications damage mitochondria to create their occasionally fatal adverse effects."
See this abstract.

What does your medication do to YOUR mitochondria?

Monkeys given vaccines develop Autism behaviors

For some time it has been hard to prove whether vaccines caused the increase in the number of autistic children in industrialized countries.
Now researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have vaccinated monkeys to see how their neural development would change when inoculated according to the schedule of common vaccines.
These animals develop autistic
behavioral patterns.
Another article here
New test can detect autism as early as nine months of age