Expression of Longevity Genes in Response to Extended Fasting

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effect of fasting on physical changes associated with cardiovascular disease.

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is the largest contributor to morbidity and mortality in the Western world and is associated with high-calorie diet, high body mass, and a variety of other factors. CHD can lead to myocardial infarction (MI) and other embolic events. A growing body of evidence suggests that relatively low caloric intake in the diets of a variety of animals increases longevity and preliminary evidence among humans indicates that such caloric restriction reduces risk factors for CHD, including cholesterol levels, blood pressure, glucose, and obesity. Caloric restriction has also been shown to alter the expression of certain genes, especially the forkhead box (FOX) O and sirtuin (SIRT) genes whose over-expression has been shown to increase longevity in animal models. Extended avoidance of caloric intake, also called fasting or short-term starvation, has been shown to increase expression of the FOXA genes that have similar sequence and function as the FOXO genes and that have been shown to increase longevity among animals regardless of FOXO function. We recently demonstrated that the risk of CHD was significantly lower among patients who reported a history of routine periodic extended fasting. The two primary hypotheses for this observation are that fasting may improve individual ability to control dietary intake or that fasting may initiate a cascade of protective mechanisms that preserve cellular and metabolic health.