Attempting to Determine Harmful versus Adaptive Changes Using Epigenetic Clock Techniques
The largest of the present challenges facing the use of epigenetic clocks to measure biological age is that there is no established causal connection between what the clock measures, meaning the methylation status of specific CpG sites on the genome, and specific aspects of the burden of age-related damage and dysfunction; e.g. which changes are due to chronic inflammation, which due to mitochondrial dysfunction, etc. Thus the results obtained from an epigenetic clock assay, the raw methylation data or the resulting epigenetic age, are not actionable. There is nothing one can do with that information to guide health practi...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 22, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Bonfire Analytics Raises Oversubscribed $2M Venture Round to Accelerate Digital Health, Medical Device, & Biotech Adoption Across Healthcare Providers
Bonfire Analytics Closes its First Venture Round to Scale its AI-Driven Sales Intelligence Platform for Healthtech Companies along with Building a Powerful Foundational Dataset Consisting of 300M+ Lives Worth of Medical & Prescription Claims, 2M+ Providers, and 1,000+ Population Health Variables Bonfire Analytics announces the closing of its first venture round with key institutional investors including Impulsum Ventures, Wedbush Ventures, and Plug & Play Ventures, along with participation from the Alchemist Accelerator and Venture For America. The round will fuel product and growth initiatives to further Bon...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 22, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Alchemist Accelerator Bonfire Analytics Ed Wilson Health IT Funding Health IT Fundings Health IT Investment Impulsum Ventures Jaya Pokuri Plug & Play Ventures Venture For America Vinay Nagaraj Wedb Source Type: blogs

A Popular Science View of Recent Thinking on DNA Damage as a Cause of Aging
There are presently two views of the way in which stochastic DNA damage can contribute to aging. Most DNA damage occurs in inactive genes in cells that will not replicate many more times, and thus cannot possibly produce systemic consequences throughout large regions of the body. The first argument for a way in which random DNA damage can produce a broader effect is via somatic mosaicism, in which mutational damage occurs in stem cells, allowing those mutations to spread throughout tissue over time. It is unclear as to how to measure the contribution of this process to age-related loss of function, however, and its contrib...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 21, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Astrocyte Reactivity in the Development of Alzheimer's Disease
Glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) consistently shows up in proteomic analyses of age-related neurodegenerative processes, particularly now that more research groups are engaged in building early warning biomarker profiles for the later development of Alzheimer's disease. Such studies are usually focused on Alzheimer's disease because that is where most neuroscience funding is directed, but the presence of GFAP as a marker is more generally applicable to the aging of the brain and its supporting cell populations. Astrocyte cells exhibit increased expression of GFAP when they become reactive, it is a well-known m...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 20, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

To What Degree is Alzheimer's Disease a Modern Phenomenon?
Here find an interesting commentary on what might be gleaned of the prevalence of Alzheimer's disease in antiquity from the body of ancient writings on the topic of aging, memory, and health. The consensus is that Alzheimer's disease is a creation of modernity, some combination of a longer life expectancy for a greater fraction of the population coupled with increased calorie intake and less active lives. Yet unlike type 2 diabetes, risk of Alzheimer's risk doesn't correlate well with the usual suspect lifestyle choices that raise the risk of age-related disease and lower life expectancy. This line of thinking has l...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 19, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Reviewing the Development of Senotherapeutics to Treat Aging
Senescent cells accumulate with age and contribute meaningfully to chronic inflammation and degenerative aging. Destroying these cells produces rapid and sizable reversal of age-related diseases in mice, demonstrating that the presence of senescence cells acts to maintain a more dysfunctional, inflamed metabolism. This is well known by now, and numerous biotech companies in the first wave of development of senolytic treatments to selectively destroy senescent cells are in varying stages of preclinical and clinical development. Meanwhile, the off-label use of dasatinib and quercetin, a low-cost senolytic therapy that is nei...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 19, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 19th 2024
This study aimed to explore the metabolic mechanisms and potential biomarkers associated with declining HGS among older adults. We recruited 15 age- and environment-matched inpatients (age, 77-90 years) with low or normal HGS. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) gene sequencing were performed to analyze the metabolome of serum and stool samples and the gut microbiome composition of stool samples. Spearman's correlation analysis was used to identify the potential serum and fecal metabolites associated with HGS. We assessed the levels of serum and fecal metabolites belonging to...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 18, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Why the Low Weight Group Exhibits Worse Outcomes in Some Epidemiological Studies
In this study, we first explored the association between WC, WHtR, and WWI change patterns and multimorbidity. WC and WHtR are considered to be important anthropometric indicators of abdominal obesity. Previous studies have suggested that WC and WHtR can reflect body fat percentage accurately and play an important role in predicting some chronic diseases, such as cardiovascular disease and metabolic syndrome. The pathway may explain that abdominal obesity significantly increased plasma triglycerides, low density lipoproteins, and very low density lipoproteins, which have been shown to increase the risk of adverse outcomes ...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 16, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Gut Microbiome Changes Correlate with Low Grip Strength in Older People
This study aimed to explore the metabolic mechanisms and potential biomarkers associated with declining HGS among older adults. We recruited 15 age- and environment-matched inpatients (age, 77-90 years) with low or normal HGS. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and 16S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) gene sequencing were performed to analyze the metabolome of serum and stool samples and the gut microbiome composition of stool samples. Spearman's correlation analysis was used to identify the potential serum and fecal metabolites associated with HGS. We assessed the levels of serum and fecal metabolites belonging to...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 15, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Monocyte Population Differences with Age Following Bone Fracture
The innate immune system is involved in tissue maintenance and regeneration. That includes populations of monocytes, circulating innate immune cells in the bloodstream that enter damaged tissue to become macrophages. Monocytes are somewhat easier to catalog and study than is the case for macrophages. The former can be found in a blood sample, while the latter require a tissue sample. Researchers tend to follow the incentives attending the cost and availability of data, and thus we have examples like today's open access paper, in which the authors focus on circulating monocytes in the context of bone fracture. You mi...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 14, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Reviewing the Data on Human Use of Rapamycin
Rapamycin and some of the later rapalog derivatives such as everolimus, all of which function via inhibition of mTOR, are arguably the best of the present crop of geroprotective drugs capable of modestly slowing aging and extending life in animal studies. The effects of rapamycin in mice are robust and repeatable, though never as large as we'd all like them to be. Like many of the other interventions that modestly slow aging in animal models these small molecule drugs mimic some of the effects of calorie restriction, and likely produce benefits largely through increased efficiency of the cell maintenance processes of autop...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 13, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Macrophages Disrupt Bone Regeneration by Provoking Stem and Progenitor Cell Senescence
In this study, we revealed that macrophages in calluses secrete prosenescent factors, including grancalcin (GCA), during aging, which triggers skeletal stem cell and progenitor cell (SSPC) senescence and impairs fracture healing. Local injection of human recombinant GCA in young mice induced SSPC senescence and delayed fracture repair. Genetic deletion of Gca in monocytes/macrophages was sufficient to rejuvenate fracture repair in aged mice and alleviate SSPC senescence. Mechanistically, GCA binds to the plexin-B2 receptor and activates Arg2-mediated mitochondrial dysfunction, resulting in cellular senescence. Depletion of...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 12, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs

Considering the Near Future of Senotherapeutics
Senescent cells accumulate with age, and this accumulation drives a sizable fraction of the dysfunction of degenerative aging. While never present in very large numbers, these cells energetically secrete signal molecules that provoke inflammation and tissue remodeling. As noted here, a major theme in the development of senotherapeutic drugs to either selectively destroy senescent cells or broadly suppress the disruptive signaling of senescent cells is the need for greater understanding of the diversity of cellular senescence. Different tissues, different cell types, different origins of the senescent state may all be meani...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 12, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs

Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 12th 2024
In conclusion, frailty is a dynamic process, and improved frailty and remaining robust are significantly associated with lower risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular death in older people. « Back to Top Greater Individual Wealth Correlates with Longer Life Expectancy https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2024/02/greater-individual-wealth-correlates-with-longer-life-expectancy/ Individual wealth correlates with life expectancy, with an effect size that is in the same ballpark as those related to lifestyle choices involving exercise, diet, and consequences thereof. It remains unclear...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 11, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs

Reversing Age-Related Frailty Reduces Cardiovascular Risk and Mortality
In conclusion, frailty is a dynamic process, and improved frailty and remaining robust are significantly associated with lower risk of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular death in older people. (Source: Fight Aging!)
Source: Fight Aging! - February 9, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs