Inflammaging in the Inner Ear, a Path to Hearing Loss

Inflammaging is a blanket term for the inappropriate inflammatory reaction of the immune system to the accumulation of molecular damage and other changes that take place with age. Constant, low-grade, unresolved inflammatory activation of the immune system is a feature of aging. It alters cell behavior for the worse and is disruptive to tissue structure and function. A number of different mechanisms contribute to forming and maintaining the state of inflammaging, such as pro-inflammatory signaling produced by ever-larger numbers of senescent cells, and innate immune recognition of mislocalized mitochondrial DNA that results from mitochondrial stress and dysfunction. It seems likely that progress in stopping inflammaging will only emerge from ways to address the mechanisms that cause aging, like those mentioned above. Clear the senescent cells, repair or replace the mitochondria, and so forth. In today's open access review paper, researchers discuss inflammaging as a contribution to age-related hearing loss. Chronic inflammation and the problems that follow in its wake can be found throughout the body; one could point to dozens of papers much like this one, each focused on the consequences of chronic inflammation in a single organ or tissue. Controlling inflammaging, shutting it down while still preserving the normal, transient inflammatory response to infection and damage, is a very necessary goal in the treatment of aging as a medical condition. Cochlear inflam...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs