Evidence for Human Species Longevity to be a Matter of Many Small Adaptations
Why do humans live so much longer than other, short lived species? The researchers here provide evidence to suggest that it is a matter of many small changes, with the specific area of investigation being the the cellular repair mechanisms of autophagy. A world in which differences in longevity between species are the summed contributions from countless small effects is one in which we should discount the possibility that comparative genetic studies - between long-lived and short-lived humans, or between humans and other species - can yield silver bullets, findings that can on their own offer the potential to dramatically ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 22, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
The changing needs of a cell: No Membrane? No Problem!
Russian nesting dolls. Credit: iStock.
How “membrane-less” organelles help with key cellular functions
Scientists have long known that animal and plant cells have specialized subdivisions called organelles. These organelles are surrounded by a semi-permeable barrier, called a membrane, that both organizes the organelles and insulates them from the rest of the cell’s mix of proteins, salt, and water. This set-up helps to make cells efficient and productive, aiding in energy production and other specialized functions. But, because of their semi-permeable membranes, organelles can’t regroup and reform in respons...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - January 3, 2018 Category: Research Authors: Kathryn Calkins Tags: Cell Biology Cells Cellular Processes Nucleolus Organelles Proteins RNA Source Type: blogs
Mapranosis: the Influence of Commensal Microbes on Neurodegenerative Disease
Commensal microbes are the largely helpful populations that live inside us, usually meaning the gut microbiota, but there are others, such as the bacteria found in the mouth. Among these largely helpful microbes are a range of species that cause us harm over the years, however - consider the bacterial origins of gum disease, for example. Researchers are increasingly interested in the ways in which the swarming microbial life inside us, and particularly in the gut, might influence the progression of aging; to what degree are gut bacteria a cause of the observed natural variations in pace and outcome of aging in mammals? Thi...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 26, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Brief Guide to the CTE Brains in the News. Part 2: Fred McNeill
Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is the neurodegenerative disease of the moment, made famous by the violent and untimely deaths of many retired professional athletes. Repeated blows to the head sustained in contact sports such asboxing and American football can result in abnormal accumulations oftau protein (usually many years later). The autopsied brains from two of these individuals are shown below.Left: courtesy of Dr. Ann McKee inNYT. Right: courtesy of Dr. Bennett Omalu inCNN. These are coronal sections1 from the autopsied brains of: (L) Aaron Hernandez, aged 27; and(R) Fred McNeill, aged 63.Part 1 of this ...
Source: The Neurocritic - December 11, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: The Neurocritic Source Type: blogs
Purging Healthcare of Unnatural Acts
BY UWE REINHARDT
In tribute to Uwe we are re-running this instant classic from THCB’s archives. Originally published on Jan 31, 2017.
Everyone knows (or should know) that forcing a commercial health insurer to write for an individual a health insurance policy at a premium that falls short of the insurer’s best ex ante estimate of the cost of health care that individual will require is to force that insurer into what economists might call an unnatural act.
Remarkably, countries that rely on competing private health insurers to operate their universal, national health insurance systems all do just that. They allow...
Source: The Health Care Blog - November 21, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: John Irvine Tags: Repeal Replace Trending Uwe Reinhardt Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, November 20th 2017
This study cohort is a healthy subset of the EpiPath cohort, excluding all participants with acute or chronic diseases. With a mediation analysis we examined whether CMV titers may account for immunosenescence observed in ELA.
In this study, we have shown that ELA is associated with higher levels of T cell senescence in healthy participants. Not only did we find a higher number of senescent cells (CD57+), these cells also expressed higher levels of CD57, a cell surface marker for senescence, and were more cytotoxic in ELA compared to controls. Control participants with high CMV titers showed a higher number of senes...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 19, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Mild Mitochondrial Stress Found to Prevent Some of the Age-Related Declines in Cellular Maintenance in Nematodes
Hormesis is a near ubiquitous phenomenon in living organisms and their component parts: a little damage, a short or mild exposure to damaging circumstances, can result in a net benefit to health and longevity. Cells respond to damage or stress by increasing their self-repair efforts for some period of time, maintaining their function more effectively than would otherwise have been the case. At the high level, the outcomes of hormesis have been measured for a wide variety of stresses and systems, from individual cells to entire organisms. At the low level of specific biochemical processes and interaction of components insid...
Source: Fight Aging! - November 17, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
How a Football-Loving SLP Views Potential Effects of Repeated Head Injuries
When I was in high school applying for colleges, I had two criteria for my potential university: strong academics and football. I knew I wanted the camaraderie of a football game day. My older sister, Beth, attended Marshall University during the Randy Moss/Chad Pennington years, and I was fortunate to attend many Thundering Herd home games during her time there.
I chose the University of Tennessee for my undergraduate degree. Saturday game day in the Southeastern Conference with the Vol Navy was even more than I had expected. The power-T and tailgating were even enough to get my parents to make the drive from Williamson,...
Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - October 12, 2017 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Katie Suggs Tags: Speech-Language Pathology Cognitive Rehabilitation Language Disorders Traumatic Brain Injury Source Type: blogs
Collective knowledge is the answer … what ’ s the question?
Three’s Company, Ten’s a Crowd
Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them. —James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds
More Undoctored Wisdom:
Let’s take that further: “Groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them” . . . including doctors.
Mass panic, stampedes, shoppers trampled on Black Friday—crowds in a panic or seized by anger or greed can be frightening. But what about crowds quietly contemplating a question, each individual applying his or her unique insight and experience? Can we ...
Source: Wheat Belly Blog - October 5, 2017 Category: Cardiology Authors: Dr. Davis Tags: Undoctored Undoctored U Wheat Belly/Undoctored Cruise diy health Dr. Davis healthcare Source Type: blogs
Gottlieb Speaks to RAPS Regulatory Conference
United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Scott Gottlieb recently spoke with attendees of the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society (RAPS) Regulatory Convergence conference about the steps the FDA is taking to make the clinical end of drug development more efficient and effective.
Gottlieb started by speaking and providing an overview of the history of medicine, all the way back to the “germ theory,” first proposed by Girolamo Fracastoro in 1546 through the late 1850s when Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch offered convincing evidence that germs caused disease and the 1870s, when sanitation was final...
Source: Policy and Medicine - September 28, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: Thomas Sullivan - Policy & Medicine Writing Staff Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, September 25th 2017
Fight Aging! provides a weekly digest of news and commentary for thousands of subscribers interested in the latest longevity science: progress towards the medical control of aging in order to prevent age-related frailty, suffering, and disease, as well as improvements in the present understanding of what works and what doesn't work when it comes to extending healthy life. Expect to see summaries of recent advances in medical research, news from the scientific community, advocacy and fundraising initiatives to help speed work on the repair and reversal of aging, links to online resources, and much more.
This content is...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 24, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
RIPK1 as a Target to Reduce Microglial Dysfunction in Alzheimer's Disease
One component of most neurodegenerative diseases is that classes of immune cells resident in the brain adopt disruptive, inflammatory behaviors. This is a reaction in some way to growing levels of damage in the form of aggregated proteins, such as amyloid-β and tau in Alzheimer's disease, but it isn't a helpful reaction. It makes the overall situation worse, producing greater dysfunction in the necessary operations of brain cells. Reducing this immune failure should help to slow disease progression even in the absence of effective ways to remove the protein aggregates - though that will have to happen as well in order to ...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 20, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Alzheimer's Research - New brain cell loss mechanism uncovered
In this study, we show for the first time that necroptosis is activated in Alzheimer ’s disease, providing a plausible mechanism underlying neuronal loss in this disorder, ” said Liang, who contributed to the study’s gene expression analyses.To explore necroptosis, the research team utilized multiple cohorts of human samples obtained fromthe Brain and Body Donation Program at the Banner Sun Health Research Institute and Mount Sinai VA Medical Center Brain Bank.First, they measured RIPK1, RIPK3 and MLKL in a specific region of the brain that is typically ravaged by cell loss during the advance of Alzheimer ’s diseas...
Source: Alzheimer's Reading Room, The - July 26, 2017 Category: Neurology Tags: alzheimer's alzheimer's research alzheinmer's dementia brain cell loss causes of alzheimer's health memory loss science tau Source Type: blogs
A Possible Path to Preventing TDP-43 Aggregation
TDP-43 is known to increase with age, and also forms aggregates observed in ALS and frontemporal dementia, among other conditions. The increased amount of TDP-43 alone, even without aggregates, appears to diminish the cellular housekeeping process of autophagy, with detrimental long term consequences. Artificially reducing the levels of TDP-43 too far will produce other issues, however, as this disrupts correct microglial function in the brain, making the microglia too aggressive when it comes to dismantling synaptic connections between brain cells. Thus building a therapy that targets TDP-43 isn't as straightforward as it...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 19, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
