Correlations Between Mechanisms of Aging and Diseases of Aging

Researchers here mine a very large data set to establish whether age-related diseases linked to a specific underlying single causative mechanism of aging will show up together in patients more often than not. One would expect that they will. To pick one example, multiple age-related diseases appear likely to be primarily caused by the increased presence of senescent cells in old tissues. A patient's senescent cell burden will thus largely determine the risk of suffering from all of those conditions. Patients exhibiting one condition, most likely because they have more senescent cells than their healthier peers, should be more likely to also exhibit other conditions in that set. Age-associated accumulation of molecular and cellular damage leads to an increased susceptibility to loss of function, disease, and death. Aging is the major risk factor for many chronic and fatal human diseases, including Alzheimer's disease, multiple cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), which are collectively known as age-related diseases (ARDs). However, genetic, environmental, and pharmacological interventions can ameliorate loss of function during aging and confer resistance to multiple age-related diseases in laboratory animals. Age-related multimorbidity, the presence of more than one ARD in an individual, is posing a major and increasing challenge to health care systems worldwide. An important, open question, therefore, is whether mechanisms of aging i...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs