prayagraj given the fact that since the dawn of human intellect man has always explored ways to live longer and in the quest to find a way to defeat aging is still as fascinating as it was when humankind evolved a team of scientists in the biochemistry department of allahabad university have found positive effects of a compound berberine to act as an antiaging compoundled by prof si rizvi of the department of biochemistry this novel antiaging intervention has been published by the team in a recent research paper published in the leading german research journal z naturoforshthe findings of prof rizvi and his team at the department of biochemistry au provides a breakthrough in antiaging medicineberberine is a chemical found in some plants and is commonly known as tree turmeric indian traditional medicine describes berberine to benefit people with certain heart conditions and is also sometimes used to control blood sugar and hypertension explains prof rizvi however it is for the first time that the efficacy of berberine has been scientifically validated with respect to its antiaging properties he addedspeaking to toi prof rizvi said that for testing the antiaging effect they developed a model of rats which had a higher rate of aging normally rats have a life span of 24 months but the model of rat developed by the research team aged much faster and had a lifespan of only six months the research team treated the rats with berberine for six weeks after this period the rats were sacrificed and an array of biochemical parameters were investigatedto our amazement the research team found very interesting results leading us to believe that berberine surely offers a viable antiaging alternative says prof rizviprof rizvi added that berberine showed a very strong effect on transport of calcium and sodium across cell membranes in fact during aging it is known that the ability of the body to transport ions across cell membranes gets compromised the ability of berberine to reverse the aginginduced changes in membrane transport of sodium and calcium is an important finding and opens up a new area of research said prof rizviprof rizvi is hopeful that this research provides an important lead in antiaging research it also highlights the importance of exploring further into the indian traditional system of medicine and testing the efficacy of bioactive compounds in plants which are known to display medicinal properties