H2S Treaments: First Steps to a Zombie Apocolypse?

Only kidding above, but below they are very serious about what H2S can do:

Hydrogen sulfide, or H2S, the chemical that gives rotten eggs their sulfurous stench — and the same compound that researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center successfully have used to put mice into a state of reversible metabolic hibernation — has now been shown to significantly increase life span and heat tolerance in the nematode worm, or C. elegans.

These findings by Mark Roth, Ph.D., a member of the Center's Basic Sciences Division, and Dana Miller, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research fellow in Roth's lab, appear in the PNAS Online Early Edition, a publication of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

In an effort to understand the mechanisms by which hydrogen sulfide induces hibernation in mice, the researchers turned to the tiny nematode, a workhorse of laboratory science because its biology is similar in many respects that of humans. For example, like humans, nematodes have a central nervous system and the ability to reproduce. The worms also are ideally suited for studying life span, because they normally live for only two to three weeks.

The researchers found, to their surprise, that nematodes that were raised in a carefully controlled atmosphere with low concentrations of H2S (50 parts per million in room air) did not hibernate. Instead, their metabolism and reproductive activity remained normal, their life span increased and they became more tolerant to heat than untreated worms.

The H2S-exposed worms lived eight times longer than untreated worms when moved from normal room air (22 C or 70 F) to a high-temperature environment (35 degrees Celsius, or 95 F). Roth and colleagues replicated these results in 15 independent experiments.

"Although the maximum extension of survival time varied between experiments, the effect was quite robust. On average, 77 percent of the worms exposed to H2S outlived the untreated worms," Roth said. The mean life span of worms grown in an atmosphere laced with hydrogen sulfide was 9.6 days greater than that of the untreated population, a longevity increase of 70 percent.

Resident Evil or longevity treatments? Do we really want Baby Boomers to live 70% longer? That might be a distopia in and of itself! Imagine: 2075 and we'd still be hearing about how GREAT (with blink tag) the 1960s/Woodstock/Summer of Love were. And around 2100 we'd finally have a Gen X President.

Dystopia! Dystopia! Thy name is the Curse of the Undying Boomers!

O:)