[Illusion]

C(60) fullerene is a naturally occurring molecule containing 60 carbon atoms arranged in a sphere. It is famously known as the buckyball, short for buckminsterfullerene, and discovered in 1985.
Since 1993, the molecule has been suspected to have multiple potential biological benefits. This list includes UV and radioprotection, antiviral, antioxidant, and anti-amyloid activities, allergic response and angiogenesis inhibitions, immune stimulating and antitumour effects, enhancing effect on neurite outgrowth, gene delivery, and even hair-growing activity.
In the current study researchers fed the molecule dissolved in olive oil to rats and compared outcomes to a control group of rats who got plain olive oil.
The main question they wanted to answer was whether chronic C60 administration had any toxicity, what they discovered actually surprised them.
“Here we show that oral administration of C60 dissolved in olive oil (0.8 mg/ml) at reiterated doses (1.7 mg/kg of body weight) to rats not only does not entail chronic toxicity,” they write “but it almost doubles their lifespan.”
“The estimated median lifespan (EML) for the C60-treated rats was 42 months while the EMLs for control rats and olive oil-treated rats were 22 and 26 months, respectively,” they write.
Using a toxicity model the researchers demonstrated that the effect on lifespan seems to be mediated by “attenuation of age-associated increases in oxidative stress”
They also demonstrated that the compound is fully absorbed via the GI tract and totally eliminated from the body in 10 hours.
“These results of importance in the fields of medicine and toxicology should open the way for the many possible -and waited for- biomedical applications of C60 including cancer therapy, neurodegenerative
disorders, and ageing,” they conclude.

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Original article.
Baati T, et al., The prolongation of the lifespan of rats by repeated oral administration of [60]fullerene,
Biomaterials (2012), doi:10.1016/j.biomaterials.2012.03.036
http://extremelongevity.net/wp-conte...-Fullerene.pdf
The prolongation of the lifespan of rats by repeated oral administration of [60]
fullerene
Tarek Baati , Fanchon Bourasset , Najla Gharbi , Leila Njim , Manef Abderrabba ,
Abdelhamid Kerkeni , Henri Szwarc , Fathi Moussa.
Very interesting.

[Kerri]

Aids, ebola, west nile, hcv, sars, etc etc explode across this planet and they've known about the antiviral properties since '85?Hmmmmm.

[William May]

All I can tell you is that Learjet brake discs are made from this stuff, and it lasts forever. They introduced the Lear 45 in 1998, and I have yet to change a brake because it is worn out. Typically, the seals leak and they have to be changed for that, but they NEVER wear out. It's kind of creepy, because all the other Lear brakes (and aircraft brakes in general) only last about 300-500 landings. The buckeyball brakes go thousands of landings and the wear pins hardly move. Maybe I should start licking them.
(This is also the first cover story in Popular Science that I've ever seen come true. Most of the stuff they put on the cover, you never hear about again. This technology actually showed up, and it really works. Who'd a thunk it?!?!)