Camels are immune to most dangerous viral diseases.
Scientists from the United Arab Emirates have proposed to more actively study the defense mechanisms of one of the hardiest animals, the camel, in order to fight human diseases. Project leader Dr. Sabah Yassim said that since camels are immune to most dangerous viral diseases, their tissues could be used to create new effective drugs. Camels have unique physiological characteristics that allow them to exist in the harshest desert conditions. They cope with dehydration, because their circulatory system can store water reserves, the lack of food is compensated by the deposits of fatty tissue in the humps, and camel milk is kept fresh much longer than cow’s milk. But that’s not all. The immune system of camels is so perfect that they are immune to most of the viral diseases that other mammals die from. They are, for example, completely immune to foot-and-mouth disease and rinderpest. Camel antibodies are much simpler than human antibodies, so, says Dr. Sabah Yassim, it is much easier to recreate them artificially. Moreover, the antibodies produced by camels are very small in size. They can easily be injected into human tissue or even a cell, Dr. Yassim writes in the British scientific journal Problems in Biology. Until now, camels have been overlooked as a source of producing possible substances to fight human viral diseases. In the medicine of tomorrow, Arab scientists believe, the camel’s immune mechanisms will not only be the subject of close study, but also a means of fighting many human diseases.
Modern scientific research has shown that during the period of anabiosis experimental animals without harm to their own health tolerate increased doses of poisons, radioactive irradiation, as well as do not die and do not get sick from artificial contamination of their microbes, viruses, etc.
This emphasizes a higher level of protective and adaptive capabilities of the mammalian organism under this variant of living matter existence. In the state of anabiosis living beings (some microbes, fungi) can survive even in permafrost conditions. Resistance of microorganism and plant species to the influence of unfavorable external factors (high and low temperatures, droughts, etc.), at which they fall into a state of dormancy or anabiosis, should be considered as a protective adaptation developed during a long evolutionary process.Of all the variety of tested and identified means of prolonging life, the most effective methods ironically turned out to be the simplest ones – lowering the body temperature of cold-blooded organisms, starvation and reduction of caloric intake. These simple actions can lead to a two- to threefold increase in longevity. All these data indicate that in disease and aging it is necessary to keep the most important, in particular regulatory systems of the organism, “clean” in order for them to function normally.
Increase of human life expectancy, realized as a result of periodic dry fasting or staying on restricted diets, is similar to lengthening of life achieved during winter hibernation of animals, which takes place in conditions of feeding by the organism with its own reserves at reduced body temperature. It has been established that the higher the total (over a lifetime) duration of hibernation of animals, the longer their life expectancy, both total and the part of it that they spend in a state of wakefulness.
