Plasma after exercise allows mice to grow more brain cells?

Today, a new study published in the top academic journal "Nature" may bring good news to people who do not love sports

Numerous scientific experiments have proved that exercise promotes health, not only strengthening the body, but also improving the cognitive function of the brain

In order to better understand how fitness can achieve brain-building effects, they first arranged long-distance running for mice in the laboratory

The benefits of exercise quickly became apparent

Surprisingly, an experiment conducted by the researchers next showed that the blood of exercise mice can allow their non-exercise companions to enjoy the benefits of exercise

▲Injecting the plasma of long-distance running mice into non-exercising mice can promote the growth of more new nerve cells in the hippocampus of the latter's brain; the plasma of non-exercising mice does not work (picture source: reference [1 ])

Professor Wyss-Coray, who led this research, has been committed to finding innovative therapies for anti-aging and related diseases in human plasma for many years

This time, Professor Wyss-Coray and his colleagues began to look for special substances in the blood of mice that exercise regularly that are particularly helpful to the brain

Through proteomics analysis, they identified that the expression of 235 proteins in the plasma of exercised mice was significantly different from that of mice that never exercised

Abnormal activation of the complement system can lead to chronic inflammation, and neuroinflammation is thought to be closely related to the decline in brain cognitive ability

▲A lot of exercise changed the protein content related to the complement system and inflammation in the blood of mice (picture source: reference [1])

The researchers further analyzed the plasma proteins of long-distance running mice and isolated a protein with anti-inflammatory effects: clusterin

Experiments have shown that after trying to remove clusterin, the blood of long-distance running mice loses its magical effect to a large extent and cannot help non-exercising mice to reduce neuroinflammation

Consistent with the findings in mice, the study authors also assessed the level of clusterin protein in human plasma

The researchers concluded that these results indicate that there is a transferable anti-inflammatory "exercise factor" in the blood, which not only gives us a new understanding of why fitness can invigorate the brain, but is also expected to point out new ideas for cognitive disorders such as Alzheimer's disease.

Note: The original text has been deleted

Reference materials:

[1] Zurine De Miguel et al.

[2] Blood from marathoner mice boosts brain function in their couch-potato counterparts.