Curcumin extends life span, improves health span, and modulates the expression of age-associated aging genes in Drosophila melanogaster.
BACKGROUND
Curcumin, an extract from the rhizome of the plant Curcuma longa (turmeric), has been widely used as a spice and herbal medicine in Asia. It has been suggested to have many biological activities, such as antioxidative, antiinflammatory, anticancer, chemopreventive, and antineurodegenerative properties. We evaluated the impact of curcumin on life span, fecundity, feeding rate, oxidative stress, locomotion, and gene expression in two different wild-type Drosophila melanogaster strains, Canton-S and Ives, under two different experimental conditions.


RESULTS
We report that curcumin extended the life span of two different strains of D. melanogaster, an effect that was accompanied by protection against oxidative stress, improvement in locomotion, and chemopreventive effects. Life span extension was gender and genotype specific. Curcumin also modulated the expression of several aging-related genes, including mth, thor, InR, and JNK.


CONCLUSIONS
The observed positive effects of curcumin on life span and health span in two different D. melanogaster strains demonstrate a potential applicability of curcumin treatment in mammals. The ability of curcumin to mitigate the expression levels of age-associated genes in young flies suggests that the action of curcumin on these genes is a cause, rather than an effect, of its life span-extending effects.
Lee
Kyu-Sun
KS
Aging Research Center, Korean Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Daejeon, Korea.
Lee
Byung-Sup
BS
Semnani
Sahar
S
Avanesian
Agnesa
A
Um
Chae-Yoon
CY
Jeon
Hyun-Jin
HJ
Seong
Ki-Moon
KM
Yu
Kweon
K
Min
Kyung-Jin
KJ
Jafari
Mahtab
M
D000375:Aging / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000235:genetics; D000818:Animals; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D003474:Curcumin / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000494:pharmacology*; D019587:Dietary Supplements; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000235:genetics*; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation / Q000187:drug effects*; D017344:Genes, Insect / Q000235:genetics; D006262:Health; D008124:Locomotion / Q000187:drug effects; D008136:Longevity / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000235:genetics; D020411:Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis; D018384:Oxidative Stress / Q000187:drug effects; D020011:Protective Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000494:pharmacology; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D016019:Survival Analysis; D014158:Transcription, Genetic / Q000187:drug effects
D020011:Protective Agents; D003474:Curcumin