Aging is Complex and Shifts Dramatically Over Late Life as it Accelerates

My attention was drawn recently to an open access paper from earlier in the year that illustrates the magnitude of the difference between aging in early old age versus later old age. The causes of aging are comparatively simple forms of damage and disarray that emerge from the normal operation of metabolism, but because a living being is an immensely complicated system, even simple damage quickly spirals into complex consequences. Simple changes in a complex system produce complex outcomes. Aging greatly changes pace and character in its early stages versus its late stages, as chains of cause and consequence pile up, and damage interacts with damage. It accelerates, and dysfunction grows and changes in nature. The work noted here looks at the transcriptome of aged mice, an assessment of which genes are being expressed, and to what degree. The differences between mice in early and late old age are sizable, and where it is understood as to what effects are produced by the differences in transcription, it connects to the usual concerns in aging: diminished function, increased inflammation, and so forth. This reflects what we see in our own species; there is a great deal of difference between a 60-year-old and an 80-year-old. The observed differences are built from changes in cell function, that emerge in response to rising levels of cell and tissue damage. Different phases of aging in mouse old skeletal muscle With a graying population and increasing longevi...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs