Report: Study Reverses Gray Hair, Wrinkles, Balding in Mice

Calling their results "unprecedented," genetic researchers have successfully reversed wrinkles, gray hair, and balding – features of aging – in laboratory mice, The Washington Times reported.

The scientific study introduced a specific gene mutation on a mouse that led to wrinkled skin, gray hair, and hair loss, but when that mutation was turned off "the mouse returned to a previous life of smooth skin and luxurious fur only two months later — deemed 'indistinguishable' from a healthy mouse of the same age," according to the Times.

"To our knowledge, this observation is unprecedented," leader of the study, University of Alabama at Birmingham professor Keshav Singh said in a statement.

"This mouse model should provide an unprecedented opportunity for the development of preventive and therapeutic drug development strategies to augment the mitochondrial functions for the treatment of aging-associated skin and hair pathology and other human diseases in which mitochondrial dysfunction plays a significant role."

The study set out to study ways to slow or reverse the effects of aging, and test mice were fed "an antibiotic which prompted the change within the gene," per the Times.

"Dramatically, this hair loss and wrinkled skin could be reversed by turning off the mutation," according to the study, the Times reported. "The wrinkled skin showed changes similar to those seen in both intrinsic and extrinsic aging — intrinsic aging is the natural process of aging, and extrinsic aging is the effect of external factors that influence aging, such as skin wrinkles that develop from excess sun or long-term smoking."

The National Institutes of Health and the Department of Veterans Affairs helped fund the research.

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