Fight Aging! Newsletter, March 8th 2021
Conclusion
Coupled with the animal data, and the existing human trial data for safety, the results here suggests that someone should run a formal, controlled trial of flagellin immunization in older people, 65 and over. The goal would be to see whether (a) this sort of outcome holds up in a larger group of people, and (b) there is a meaningful impact on chronic inflammation and other parameters of health that are known to be affected by the aging of the gut microbiome.
The Role of Reactive Oxygen Species in Aging is Complex
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2021/03/the-role-of-reactive-oxygen-species-in-a...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 7, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Pharmacology to Target the Mechanisms of Aging is a Going Concern
Traditional pharmacological drug development involves (a) identifying a protein or protein interaction of interest in the body, (b) screening the small molecule libraries for a compound that affects that target, and then (c) making a better version of that small molecule: more effective, less harmful. That remains the bulk of the medical research and development industry, despite the proliferation of other approaches, including cell therapies, gene therapies, recombinant proteins, monoclonal antibodies, and so forth. There are goals that cannot be achieved by small molecules, and, as techniques improve and costs fall, gene...
Source: Fight Aging! - March 1, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, February 8th 2021
This study was divided in two phases: CALERIE-1 and CALERIE-2. CALERIE-1 study was performed to assess the possible effects induced by a reduction of 10-30% of caloric intake on body composition parameters and lipid profile after 6 and 12 months in a population of middle-aged non-obese subjects. CALERIE-1 results showed an improvement in lipid and glycemic profile and a reduction in body weight (BW) and fat mass.
CALERIE-2 was the largest multi-center study on CRD. A total of 220 subjects were enrolled randomly with a 2:1 allocation into two subgroups: 145 in the CRD group and 75 in the ad libitum group. The CRD gro...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 7, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
A Growing Interest in the Treatment of Aging as a Medical Condition
There is a growing interest in the treatment of aging as a medical condition, targeting mechanisms that cause aging or that are involved in the pathologies of aging. In the research community this manifests as increased funding, a greater output of potential therapies, more conferences, and more high level reviews of the state of the field, such as the paper noted here. An uptick in reviews in any part of the life siences might be taken as a sign that a field is attracting new participants. On the one hand more researchers want to learn about the state of the science because they are hearing more discussion of the field in...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 4, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
An Example of Automating Nematode Lifespan Studies
The growth of interest in targeting mechanisms of aging has led to the development of a variety of approaches to automating nematode life span studies, some of which are already available as commercial services. Researchers use the nematode species C. elegans in screening studies, searching for compounds that have effects on life span, or that interact with specific aging mechanisms of interest. Running ten thousand compounds through ten thousand dishes of nematode worms is a daunting prospect if it has to be carried out manually, and automation allows a great deal more screening to be accomplished for a given cost.
...
Source: Fight Aging! - February 3, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 25th 2021
In conclusion, our studies highlight the important role of the tyrosine degradation pathway and position TAT as a link between neuromediator production, dysfunctional mitochondria, and aging. (Source: Fight Aging!)
Source: Fight Aging! - January 24, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Considering the Ethics of Extending the Healthy Human Life Span
To suffer or become incapacitated is to diminish the utility of being alive. The way to minimize this loss is to work towards removing the causes of suffering and incapacitation. The greatest such causes are medical, and of those, aging is by far the largest. Similarly, to die is to suffer the loss of all that one might have been and done after that time. It is a tragedy that any individual ceases to exist. The way to minimize this loss is to work to remove the causes of death. The greatest such causes are medical, and of those, aging is by far the largest. Ethically, the case for working to extend healthy human life spans...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 19, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 18th 2021
In this study, Desferal, deferoxamine mesylate for injection, which is approved for the treatment of acute iron intoxication and chronic iron overload, was used to explore the beneficial effects on preventing aging-induced bone loss and mitigating dysfunction of aged BMSCs. High-dose Desferal significantly prevented bone loss in aged rats. Compared with controls, the ex vivo experiments showed that short-term Desferal administration could promote the potential of BMSC growth and improve the rebalance of osteogenic and adipogenic differentiation, as well as rejuvenate senescent BMSCs and revise the expression of stemness/se...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 17, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
A Continued Focus on Metformin, a Demonstrably Poor Approach to Treating Aging
Metformin is a poster child for the way in which much of the aging research community is focused on approaches to aging that cannot possibly achieve more than a very modest slowing of degeneration, and where the existing evidence strongly suggests that those tiny positive outcomes will be unreliable at best. Metformin is a way to tinker with the operation of a damaged metabolism, not a way to repair that damage. As a calorie restriction mimetic, the animal data shows that it compares very poorly to calorie restriction itself. We know that calorie restriction doesn't do anywhere near enough for human longevity. This is not ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 14, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
CBD and other medications: Proceed with caution
Products containing cannabidiol (CBD) seem to be all the rage these days, promising relief from a wide range of maladies, from insomnia and hot flashes to chronic pain and seizures. Some of these claims have merit to them, while some of them are just hype. But it won’t hurt to try, right? Well, not so fast. CBD is a biologically active compound, and as such, it may also have unintended consequences. These include known side effects of CBD, but also unintended interactions with supplements, herbal products, and over-the-counter (OTC) and prescription medications.
Doubling up on side effects
While generally considered safe...
Source: Harvard Health Blog - January 11, 2021 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Katsiaryna Bykov, PharmD, ScD Tags: Drugs and Supplements Marijuana Medical Research Safety Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 11th 2021
This study demonstrates the potential of a natural (o-Vanillin) and a synthetic (RG-7112) senolytic compounds to remove senescent IVD cells, decrease SASP factors release, reduce the inflammatory environment and enhance the IVD matrix production. Removal of senescent cells, using senolytics drugs, could lead to improved therapeutic interventions and ultimately decrease pain and a provide a better quality of life of patients living with intervertebral disc degeneration and low back pain.
From Ying Ann Chiao of Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation: Mitochondrial dysfunction plays a central role in aging and cardiovasc...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 10, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
A Sensible Consideration of the State of the Art in the Treatment of Aging as a Medical Condition
It used to be the case that one could write up a summary of where the research community stood on the treatment of aging as a medical condition (which was varying shades of "not that far along towards practical applications, but definitely promising if they get their act together") and then not have to update it all that much for years. Research is slow and uncertain, for one, and secondly there was, for decades, a strong cultural prejudice in the scientific community against trying to apply what was learned about aging to the treatment of aging. Little progress was made as a result.
Matters are proceeding much more...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 6, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 4th 2021
The objective of this study is to quantify the overall and cancer type-specific risks of subsequent primary cancers (SPCs) among adult-onset cancer survivors by first primary cancer (FPC) types and sex. Among 1,537,101 survivors (mean age, 60.4 years; 48.8% women), 156,442 SPC cases and 88,818 SPC deaths occurred during 11,197,890 person-years of follow-up (mean, 7.3 years). Among men, the overall risk of developing any SPCs was statistically significantly higher for 18 of the 30 FPC types, and risk of dying from any SPCs was statistically significantly higher for 27 of 30 FPC types as compared with risks in the general po...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 3, 2021 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
A Look Back at 2020: Progress Towards the Treatment of Aging as a Medical Condition
While I suspect that COVID-19 will feature prominently in most retrospectives on 2020, I'll say only a little on it. The data on mortality by year end, if taken at face value, continues to suggest that the outcome will fall at the higher end of the early estimates of a pandemic three to six times worse than a bad influenza year, ten times worse than a normal influenza year. The people who die are near entirely the old, the co-morbid, and the immunocompromised. They die because they are suffering the damage and dysfunction of aging. Yet the societal conversation and the actions of policy makers ignore this.
There is ...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 31, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Of Interest Source Type: blogs
Changing Blood Factors in Aging
Cell signaling is carried far and wide in the body via the bloodstream. The molecules involve change significantly with age, including a rise in inflammatory signaling and consequent chronic inflammation. This is a reaction to, or consequence of, forms of damage involved in aging, but it is also a source of significant further dysfunction. That much is demonstrated by plasma dilution studies, in which improved tissue function in several organs is noted as a result of diluting the signals carried by the bloodstream in an aged body.
Traditional indicators of biological age are not always informative and often requir...
Source: Fight Aging! - December 30, 2020 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
