Piling on the Senescent Cells: How Young Can One Die of Old Age?

The authors of today's open access paper use the provocative question "how young can you die of old age?" as a framing device, a way to consider what is known of the way in which type 2 diabetes and obesity harm people over the course of years and decades. These are, of course, very well studied conditions. A great deal of time has been spent and a great deal of ink spilled on the topic of exactly what excess visceral fat and the pathologies of diabetes do to an individual, at the level of cells, at the level of organs, and, most visibly, to overall health and mortality. What is new, as of recent years, is the understanding that a sizable degree of the pathology of these conditions is mediated by senescent cells. Factions within the research community have long seen diabetes as a form of accelerated aging, and evidently so given what it does to mice and people. Now, however, one can more literally argue that both obesity and diabetes produce accelerated aging. This is the case because they produce, through raised inflammation, metabolic stresses, and other means, a faster increase in the numbers of senescent cells present in the body. Senescent cells actively cause tissue dysfunction via their pro-inflammatory secretions, and their accumulation is an important contributing cause of degenerative aging. Removing senescent cells produces a narrow form of rejuvenation in mice, and the first senolytic therapies capable of a targeted destruction of senescent cells are underg...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs