What Doesn’t Kill You Makes you Stronger

Dr. Yerevanian recently led a team of investigators in studying the effects of depleting riboflavin in a type of roundworms called C. elegans, which share similar metabolic systems with humans and are often used to model human diseases.

The team used gene knockdown to reduce riboflavin levels in worms by 90% and expected the animals to experience a robust stress response to a major loss of vitamin.

In fact, the animals do experience energetic stress due to losing this important molecule. Interestingly, however, the riboflavin-reduced animals did not exhibit signs of illness or early aging.

They experienced the exact opposite reaction—they lived longer and healthier lives.

Dr. Yerevanian explains that this could be in part due to a term called hormesis—a phenomenon in which small amounts of stress cause an organism to develop a protective response that provides beneficial effects to lifespan.

Or more simply put, what doesn’t kill the animal can make them stronger.

The animals also exhibited signs of dietary restriction. Dietary restriction (also known as fasting) is known to provide benefits to health and longevity in multiple animal models. Despite the animals displaying the hallmark characteristics of fasting they were, in fact, eating normal amounts.

“We are excited that the animals showed molecular signatures of fasting even though they are eating their usual diet. This suggests to us that riboflavin depletion mimics features of dietary restriction,” says Yerevanian.

Next Steps in Riboflavin Research

The team’s findings open up interesting new possibilities when it comes to promoting longevity through the selective adjustment of vitamin levels.

“One of our goals is to see how much we can translate some of those findings into cells and mouse models. We want to see whether changing riboflavin physiology can have a positive metabolic effect in mammals,” says Yerevanian.

Strategies based on these insights could one day be used as treatments for diseases such as type 2 diabetes and fatty liver disease.

It’s not time to throw out those vitamin bottles just yet, however. More research will need to be done to better understand the underlying biology at play and to see what these findings mean for humans.

“It is early to say that this has direct implications for riboflavin consumption in humans,” Yerevanian says. “But I would say that the perception that ‘the more vitamin the better’ is not always correct, and this study provides animal evidence to show that the opposite can be true.”