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Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 3|pp 2723—2746

Meta-analytic evidence for the anti-aging effect of hormesis on Caenorhabditis elegans

Tao Sun1,3, Huifeng Wu1,2,4, Ming Cong1,4, Junfei Zhan1,3, Fei Li1,4
  • 1CAS Key Laboratory of Coastal Environmental Processes and Ecological Remediation, Yantai Institute of Coastal Zone Research (YIC), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); Shandong Key Laboratory of Coastal Environmental Processes, YICCAS, Yantai 264003, P. R. China
  • 2Laboratory for Marine Fisheries Science and Food Production Processes, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology, Qingdao 266237, P. R. China
  • 3University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, P. R. China
  • 4Center for Ocean Mega-Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao 266071, P. R. China
Received: November 6, 2019Accepted: January 12, 2020Published: February 7, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102773

Copyright: © 2020 Sun et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Mild stress-induced hormesis, as a promising strategy to improve longevity and healthy aging, meets both praise and criticism. To comprehensively assess the applicability of hormesis in aging intervention, this meta-analysis was conducted focusing on the effect of hormesis on Caenorhabditis elegans. Twenty-six papers involving 198 effect size estimates met the inclusion criteria. Meta-analytic results indicated that hormesis could significantly extend the mean lifespan of C. elegans by 16.7% and 25.1% under normal and stress culture conditions (p < 0.05), respectively. The healthspan assays showed that hormesis remarkably enhanced the bending frequency and pumping rate of worms by 28.9% and 7.0% (p < 0.05), respectively, while effectively reduced the lipofuscin level by 15.9% (p < 0.05). The obviously increased expression of dauer formation protein-16 (1.66-fold) and its transcriptional targets, including superoxide dismutase-3 (2.46-fold), catalase-1 (2.32-fold) and small heat shock protein-16.2 (2.88-fold) (p < 0.05), was one of the molecular mechanisms underlying these positive effects of hormesis. This meta-analysis provided strong evidence for the anti-aging role of hormesis, highlighting its lifespan-prolonging, healthspan-enhancing and resistance-increasing effects on C. elegans. Given that dauer formation protein-16 was highly conservative, hormesis offered the theoretical possibility of delaying intrinsic aging through exogenous intervention among humans.