What is the Fundamental Biological Process that Causes Aging?

In June, 2014, my book, entitled Rare Diseases and Orphan Drugs: Keys to Understanding and Treating the Common Diseases was published by Elsevier. The book builds the argument that our best chance of curing the common diseases will come from studying and curing the rare diseases. Chapter 4 explains that much what we think we know about the aging process comes from studying rare diseases of premature aging, such as Hutchinson–Gilford progeria syndrome, Bloom syndrome, Werner syndrome, Cockayne syndrome, dyskeratosis congenita, Fanconi anemia, Wolfram syndrome, and xeroderma pigmentosum. From Chapter 4: Based on the observation that some of the premature aging diseases have defects in DNA repair, it was hypothesized that the longevity of animal species is determined by the species-specific rate of DNA repair. Species that had a high rate of DNA repair were expected to have a long lifespan. Species with low rates of DNA repair would be short lived. Though some data supported this hypothesis, a reanalysis of the data found little evidence to favor earlier conclusions[23]. In 2009, Walker and coworkers reported a case study of a sui generis condition observed in a 16-year-old girl who had the appearance and anthropometric traits of an 11-month infant [24]. External and internal organs were infantile, including brain structure. After fetal development and birth, she had failed to mature into early childhood or adolescence. In a sense, her condition is the opposite of the prema...
Source: Specified Life - Category: Pathologists Tags: ageing aging biology of aging common disease DNA repair orphan disease orphan drugs rare disease Source Type: blogs