Low-dose Chloroquine Treatment Extends the Lifespan of Aged Rats

Chloroquine (CQ) has long been used as an anti-malarial agent (Wellems and Plowe, 2001). Recently, CQ has also been applied to treat viral infection and related diseases (Wellems and Plowe, 2001; Huang et al., 2020). However, the safety and efficacy of its applications are still under extensive debate (Solomon and Lee, 2009). Here, we discovered that low-dose CQ has a geroprotective effect on physiologically aged rats. Low-dose CQ prolonged lifespan, repressed systemic inflammation, and inhibited fibrosis across multiple tissue types in aged rats. Furthermore, we constructed transcriptomic maps for 6 tissues (kidney, small intestine, liver, heart, lung, and aorta) upon CQ treatment, thus revealing the effects of CQ at a systemic level. CQ treatment mitigated age-related molecular changes and repressed genes linked to fibrosis and the inflammatory response. Altogether, our data provide a valuable resource for investigating the impact of CQ on multiple aged tissues, which may facilitate the development of clinical applications that mitigate age-related changes in the elderly.