Effective Treatment of Alzheimer ' s Disease Requires Targeting the Mechanisms of Aging

These days, an ever larger fraction of the research community is waking to the idea that the effective treatment of age-related disease requires approaches that target the mechanisms of aging. This is a good thing, as it begins to narrow the scope of advocacy within the research community to the task of steering scientists towards better rather than worse ways of going about targeting the mechanisms of aging. It remains the case that most of the better supported lines of work related to aging are, in effect, very challenging ways to produce only small benefits at the end of the day - most researchers are working on methods of slightly slowing aging rather than methods of outright rejuvenation. Attempts to develop calorie restriction mimetics or other therapies capable of upregulating stress responses and cellular maintenance processes are a good example of the type, and they are much on display in this open access paper (currently available in PDF format only), alongside other targets that, while not being root causes of aging, are thought of as being significant enough in the progression of disease to merit effort. While goals such as suppression of chronic inflammation and overriding the dysfunction of vascular cells are seductive, in the sense that many near-term approaches are viable, this sort of work still leaves the underlying causes of aging untouched, and is thus limited in the benefits it can provide. Geroscience is a multidisciplinary field that exa...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs