A study published in this month's Nature suggests that scientists have found a region of the brain that controls aging. Turn it off, they theorize, and you could add 20 years to your life — presuming it works in humans, that is.

The research, conducted by the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York, injected mice with a substance that inhibits a particular molecule in their brains. The hormone is related to inflammation and stress, and was found to increase in the hypothalamus as the mice got older.

The fact that inflammation and stress makes us look and feel older — indeed, that it helps kill us — isn't news. What is disturbing to learn is that the brain is deliberately initiating this reaction. Now, at least, we may have found how to turn it off.

Not only did the mice who got the inhibitor live 20% longer — which would translate into a couple of decades in human terms — but their quality of life stayed the same. Muscle strength, bone density and skin remained the same. The experiment even worked if the mice were middle-aged when the injections began.

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If the research translates to humans (a big if), scientists think the elderly among us should go first, particularly patients with brain-related illnesses such as Alzheimer's. “If we’re going to translate this research into medicines that can help people, clearly we cannot start very early in life," Harvard molecular biologist David Sinclair told Nature.

Homepage Mashable composite, image via iStockphoto, Junos