Antioxidant activity of extracts from calf thymus and wheat sprouts. Potential relation with their activity in aging reversibility.

The potential presence in animal and vegetal tissues of compounds able to reactivate some metabolic pathways slowed down in aging fascinated, in the last century, many researchers. Old rats treated with calf thymus extract re capable of recovering altered glycogen and lipid levels, RNA/DNA ratio and transcriptional activity of DNA dependent-RNA polymerase in rat liver. More recently aging reversibility has been obtained with extracts from wheat sprouts. Old mice treated with wheat sprouts extract showed a recovery of decreased DNA synthesis in hepatocytes primary cultures when compared with the old untreated ones. Moreover old dogs orally treated for a month with wheat sprouts powder showed a 25-40% reduction of lens opacity. At the same time it was reported that wheat sprout contain a strong cocktail of antioxidant compounds. The association of this results is interesting because the oxidative stress has been soundly referred to several pathologies and to aging. Accordingly, in the last two decades, an increasing interest has been focused on the study of natural products with antioxidant activity. Antioxidants may contribute to prevent cancer and delay aging. In this context we compared the antioxidant activities of extracts from calf thymus and wheat sprouts. This to evaluate how much it is plausible that the previously observed effects on the aging reversibility could be due to the action of antioxidant compounds. The results reported in this paper demonstrated that extracts from wheat sprout and calf thymus show very similar strong activity both in ferrocianide reduction and on superoxide radical scavenging. Calf thymus extract shows a remarkable presence of taurine and glutathione. However it is surprising that this extract contain also a significant level of polyphenol molecules. The level of taurine and compounds containing thiol groups are in wheat sprout extract much lower respect to calf thymus extract. On the contrary a remarkable content of reducing glycosides and flavonoids was observed. The very similar antioxidant activity demonstrated in this paper strongly support the exciting hypothesis that the cocktails of antioxidant molecules, contained in calf thymus and wheat sprouts, are responsible for the previously reported aging reversibility effects.