 Depression is a common illness worldwide, with more than 264 million people affected according to the World Health Organization. At its worst, depression can lead to suicide. Close to 800,000 people die due to suicide every year. Suicide is the second leading cause of death in 15 to 29 year olds. And we now know that major depressive disorder causes brain aging. We'll have this story and more in this episode of Lifespan News. Welcome to Lifespan News on X10, your source for longevity science updates. I'm your host, Brent Nally. If you missed our last episode, then you can watch it by clicking the card above. We encourage you to check the description below for links to these stories. Continuing with our first story, researchers at Wheel Cornell Medical in New York City have found a link between major depressive disorder, or MDD, to brain aging. MDD is already known to accelerate aging both behaviorally and on a cellular and molecular level. But in this study, the researchers use Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, or fMRI, to study the connectivity of different brain regions and determine whether MDD patients displayed connectivity levels typical of older ages. To do so, the researchers performed fMRI scans on over 700 healthy individuals between the ages of 18 and 89 and found that connectivity decreases with age in several areas of the brain. Using machine learning techniques, the researchers then went on to predict the patient's age from their brain data. The margin of error of their predictions was 13 years, somewhat wide, but the correlation between brain connectivity and age was rather robust. The researchers then applied their model to 109 patients being treated for MDD. The model predicted them to be about 2.1 years older than their actual ages, thus strengthening the case that severe depression causes your brain to age faster than it otherwise would. Biological clocks for brain tissue have been shown to be more predictive of neurodegeneration and mortality than chronological age. So as we learn more about the biomarkers of aging, such as reduced resting state functional connectivity in the brain, we will be able to better study the mechanisms of aging and the impacts of aging interventions. For our next story, neurons from stem cells alleviate Parkinson's disease in rats. In a recent study, researchers described a method of turning mesenchymal stem cells, or MSCs, into dopaminergic neurons, significantly alleviating a Parkinson's disease-like condition in rats. Parkinson's disease is caused by the depletion of dopaminergic neurons, whose job it is to produce a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Severe lack of dopamine causes the well-known tremors and stiffness typical of Parkinson's disease. The researchers collected human MSCs from different tissues, bone marrow, adipose tissue, and dental pulp, and then treated the MSCs with a compound known as Tutu Hydroxycholesterol, or TutuHC. TutuHC is already known to facilitate the differentiation of embryonic stem cells into dopaminergic neurons, and the researchers observed that it had a similar effect on MSCs, particularly those from dental pulp. Once MSCs were primed, the researchers transplanted the MSCs into the brains of rats who had been surgically altered to display Parkinson's disease-like symptoms. The motor performance of the rats was assessed before and after surgery, as well as after the transplant. Different groups of rats received one of the three types of prime MSCs. Two more groups received untreated MSCs and a placebo, respectively. Ultimately, treated MSCs yielded the best results, again with the dental pulp MSCs being the best. According to the researchers, up to 80% of these cells differentiated into neurons, making them and the method employed highly cost-effective. By the way, Lifespan News is released every Tuesday at noon Eastern time, while our other X-10 science and advocacy videos will now be released every other Monday, also at noon Eastern time. Our next video on X-10 will be Monday, February 15, 2021, and the topic is Yamanaka Factors. We encourage you to subscribe to our new X-10 YouTube channel. Once you're subscribed, be sure to click the notification bell and select All Notifications to ensure you don't miss any videos. Now, back to the news. For our next story, we'll share why your voice matters for longevity. Breanna Deutsch is the author of Finding the Fountain, Why Government Must Unlock Biotech's Potential to Maximize Longevity. Breanna recently wrote a guest post on Lifespan.io's blog to explain why grass-root longevity is extremely important. As Breanna stated in the blog, you might think you have no influence over policymakers, but a large enough number of people contacting their representatives about a specific issue, such as aging research, can force policymakers or their staff to look into the issue and do something about it. For these reasons, Breanna maintains that it's important for you to get in touch with your representatives. In her post, Breanna goes a bit more into the details for U.S. citizens. Breanna states in the article, quote, you can begin by determining who your congressional representatives are by going here, for the U.S. House, and here for the U.S. Senate. Then, simply go to your representative's official government web pages where you can locate information on how to contact them by mail, email, or phone. The correspondence should be short and to the point, end quote. You'll find a link to Breanna's article in the description below. Moving on, there's a new resource for developing interventions to treat aging. Researchers at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging have published the results of a longitudinal and functional study of 700 aging mice. The researchers monitored the rates of age-related change using clinically important parameters such as blood glucose, body composition changes, remodeling of the spine, activity levels, metabolic changes, and aging of bone structure and untreated mice. This in-depth analysis of aging in mice is a world first and provides a highly detailed picture of how these animals age. The researchers also tested a number of potential drugs and found that benzoxazole, which increases the lifespan of nematodes, slowed down age-related bone loss in mice. The database they created will serve as a valuable resource, providing a baseline against which to measure the effect of interventions. Any deviations from the detailed patterns of aging recorded in these mice should be immediately noticeable and could help in the development of treatments that aim to reverse or slow down aging. For our final story, researchers at the Salk Institute recently received a $1.2 million grant to study age-related neurodegenerative diseases. The Salk team said the research, quote, will advance our understanding of aging mechanisms at the cognitive, genomic, and cellular levels with potentially direct translatability to humans, end quote. The team plans to investigate the role of metabolic dysfunction, specifically looking at whether mitochondrial impairment drives the cognitive decline observed in neurodegenerative diseases. That's all the news for this video. Before you go, there's a few quick, free, and simple things that you can do to help us solve the human aging problem. If you haven't already, please make sure to like this video, share this video on your social media, please make sure that you're subscribed with the bell turned to all notifications to ensure you don't miss any videos. Is there a recent life extension story that you think we should have included in one of our recent videos but haven't yet? In which of the stories from this video excited you the most, let us know what you think in the comments below. We really appreciate it and we look forward to seeing you in the next video, at least as healthy as you are now.