Lipofuscin And Aging

Lipofuscin is the deposition of waste products in the cell that are not degraded. The critical factor seems to be rate at which proteins and lipids are degraded by the various "house keeping" functions in the cell. In these days the emphasis on the dynamics of aging is typically excessive oxidation events and lipofuscin receives little attention. Lipofuscin is something that needs to be addressed because as lipofuscin deposits increase the cell becomes increasingly unable to do its job.

In the graphic below I have extracted a table from a very old study. It highlights the huge increase in lipofuscin aggregation with age. They used acetyl l carnitine has a therapeutic intervention and the results were quite good but only at very high dosages. Other and much more recent research has found that acetyl l carnitine can also play an important role in preventing Age Related Macular Degeneration (AMD). In those studies they created a compound called Phototrop, a combination of acetyl L carnitine, omega 3 fatty acids, and co-enzyme Q10.

Word of warning: you should always use alpha lipoic acid with ALC because ALC increases mitochondrial function and mitochondria are the key region where oxidants are formed.

The table below is from

Japan J Pharmacol, 38, 365-71(1988)