Perhaps in not too distant future drugs antidepressants are used with very different purposes from the current. In fact, according to research conducted in Seattle at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute by a team of researchers led by Dr. Linda B. Buck and published in the journal Nature, antidepressant drugs containing the active ingredient has the effect of mianserin stretch of 30% (six to eight weeks) the life of nematodes (roundworms even those cute little animals).

According to scholars it is because the mianserin induces processes similar to those activated by caloric restriction, a laboratory technique that is currently one of the cornerstones of research on aging processes. Subjecting the laboratory mice a diet in which they are administered in fewer calories than they consume if they could eat freely, it was possible to raise life expectancy from 39 to 56 months. Furthermore the specimens subjected to a regime of caloric restriction are not only lived longer but also more resistant to disease and keep intact, despite the progress of time, their physical and mental faculties. Researchers’s Howard Hughes Institute has also found that administration of mianserin in animals under caloric restriction does not further extend the duration of their lives.

The researchers, although they are not able to explain how it happens, believe that the mianserin slows aging in the same principle of the caloric restriction and are convinced that this discovery may shed light on the physiological processes involved by the advance of time. In this case it would be an approach that defines the chemical, which aimed to identify genetic mechanisms but not substances that have a role in aging processes. Strengthened by this conviction, hoping to soon find the drug that makes it possible to obtain in mammals and, therefore, in humans, the same results as previously observed in nematodes. Meanwhile, the antidepressants will continue to be used exclusively for the treatment of depression.