Youthful Healing

When a young person injures a muscle playing football, it’s often not long before they’re fit again and back on the pitch. But should the same injury hit an older person, recovery can take much longer. New research has found a key substance – a protein called Klotho – that flies into action following injury in youngsters, but stays relatively inactive in older people. To test whether it really does drive recovery, the team genetically engineered mice to lack Klotho, and compared their recovery to normal healthy mice. Their muscle tissue took much longer to heal (right, with tears in the green muscle tissue still visible) than in mice naturally aided by the healing powers of Klotho (left, with well healed, consistent muscle fibres). The researchers even managed to improve regeneration in older mice by providing Klotho, which means it might one day help get older people get back up and running faster.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Anthony Lewis

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Ant was the web editor in the early days of BPoD, and has since worked with the UK’s top science organisations as a writer and multimedia producer. He now splits his time between freelance work and managing multimedia at The Lancet.

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• Video from work by A. Sahu and colleagues
• Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
• Video originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Published in Nature Communications, November 2018