Among the many reasons to love anti-aging hormones, comes a new one: It can actually make you smarter. The hormone, called Klotho (great name, too), has been linked to making people's brains work better.


A new study in Cell Reports journal has found that animals and people tend to live longer if they have more Klotho in their bodies. The study examined more than 700 people between the ages of 52 and 85; around 1 in 5 people had a form of the Klotho gene in their bodies that produced the Klotho hormone.

People who had lots of Klotho experienced just as much cognitive decline as people who didn't have the hormone, but they performed better cognitively overall during their lifespan. They scored higher on cognitive tests and showed better learning and memory skills than those without the hormone. In essence, they were smarter than those who didn't have the Klotho benefit.

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If researchers can figure out how to distill and treat with Klotho, this could have a great beneficial application for everyone -- it may help treat diseases like Alzheimers, even if it can't actually stop the disease. Treatment is still a long ways a way, but researchers are hopeful. "The beauty of this study," said Molly Wagster of the National Institute of Aging, "is that the finding gives us another place to look, another path to take as we try to determine targets for the development of drugs." [NPR]