The Challenges Inherent in Understanding a Fast-Moving, Developing Field
This messy popular science article is an essay length expression of futility on the part of a journalist who accepts that he is not equipped to understand the field of aging research and the longevity industry that has arisen in the past decade. One can talk to the talking heads, but they will all say something different. One can look for proof of efficacy for specific approaches, and find only contradictory data, or only compelling animal data, or only small effect sizes, and a lack of the sort of certainty that arises from large human trials. Those trials are still in the future for near every approach to the treatment o...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 25, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs
Extracellular Vesicles from Young Plasma Produce Benefits in Old Mice
The evidence for transfusion of young plasma to produce benefits in old animals and human patients is mixed. Despite compelling demonstrations for the dilution of blood to produce benefits in older individuals, there remain many research groups who consider that the primary goal should be the identification of factors within young blood that can produce improvements to health. Inconveniently for those who argue for the primacy of dilution in producing the benefits of plasma transfusion, there are studies such as this one in which factors derived from young plasma do in fact improve health significantly in old mice.
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Source: Fight Aging! - April 25, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
The Rodent Aging Interventions Database
You might compare the LEV Foundation's Rodent Aging Interventions Database with the DrugAge database, both emerging from the efforts of researchers who found themselves frequently reviewing the existing literature on age-slowing interventions in animal models. One of the things to bear in mind about the existing literature is that rodent studies that show an apparent modest slowing of aging frequently fail to replicate when later investors take a more rigorous approach, with larger numbers of mice. The history of the NIA Interventions Testing Program is largely a repeated demonstration of this point.
The Rodent Ag...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 25, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Reviewing Approaches to Improving Aged Stem Cell Function
A variety of approaches show some promise in improving the function of stem cells in aged tissues. Stem cell populations support their tissue by providing a supply of daughter somatic cells to replace losses. This supply diminishes over time as stem cells reduce their activity for reasons that descend from the known root causes of aging, but which are not fully understood in detail. To the degree that reduced stem cell function is a response to the aged environment rather than a consequence of damage inherent to these cells, then it is useful to find ways to force stem cells to be more active. Whether this is the case may ...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 24, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Genetics by the Numbers
Even though scientists have been studying genetics since the mid-19th century, they continue to make new discoveries about genes and how they impact our health on a regular basis. NIGMS researchers study how genes are expressed and regulated, how gene variants with different “spellings” of their genetic code affect health, and much more. Get the drop on DNA and the gist of genes with these fast facts:
3.2 Billion
A marbled lungfish has a genome over 40 times larger than humans. Credit: iStock.
That’s how many base pairs—or sets of genetic “letters”—make up the human genome. If you were...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - April 24, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Genes By the Numbers DNA Genomics Source Type: blogs
Inconclusive Effects on Telomere Length from the CALERIE 2 Study
In recent years, researchers have been putting more effect into analyses of the CALERIE 2 study of human calorie restriction. The study took place some years ago, but new results continue to be published. Here, researchers show that effects on telomere length and a related aging clock are inconclusive. Telomere length measured in the white blood cells of a blood sample is not a great measure of aging. It is highly variable between individuals, is influenced day to day changes in immune status, and it takes a fairly large study group for age-related trends to show up. It has rightfully been eclipsed by the development of ag...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 24, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Regular Transfusion of Young Plasma Improves Health of Old Rats
Researchers here report on the results of transfusion of young rat plasma into old rats, starting every other week in later life. The study is small, and is one more data point to add to a mixed set of results. Plasma transfusion from young individual to old individual doesn't look that impressive, all told, either in animals or in human patients. That doesn't appear to be discouraging the community of researchers and developers who continue to work on approaches to transfusion that they believe may move the needle. The example here is a straightforward approach to transfusion, the procedure conducted every other week, and...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 24, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
The Role of Immune Aging in Neurodegenerative Conditions
The research community has come to see chronic inflammation and other age-related immune system dysfunctions as an important aspect of neurodegenerative conditions. Inflammation in the short term is necessary for defense against pathogens and regeneration following injury. Unresolved, constant inflammation is harmful to tissue structure and function, however, changing cell behavior for the worse. In brain tissue, the effects of inflammatory signaling on the behavior of innate immune cells called microglia appears particularly important. Neurogenerative conditions are characterized by activated microglia. These microglia ar...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 23, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Ambitious Goals at Mitrix Bio
Mitrix Bio is one of the companies developing the means to produce large amounts of mitochondria for transplantation. Cells will take up new mitochondria from the surrounding environment, and mitochondria can be harvested from cell cultures. Mitochondrial function declines with age, the result of (a) gene expression changes in the cell nucleus that alter mitochondrial dynamics and the quality control process of mitophagy, and (b) damage to mitochondrial DNA. Evidence from animal studies suggests that replacing mitochondria in aged tissues produces benefits to health and organ function that last for long enough to be intere...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 23, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Investigating the Mechanisms of Very Early Alzheimer's Disease
Researchers here look at cellular dysfunction that may form the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease, prior to the accumulation of misfolded amyloid-β and cognitive decline. In general, intervening early in the progression of a disease will always be easier, given the right target. The challenge lies in identifying and understanding the causative mechanisms, in an environment in which (a) there is little access to brain tissue in the earliest stages of Alzheimer's disease, and (b) the animal models are highly artificial, as mice do not normally develop anything resembling Alzheimer's disease, and thus may not accurately...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 23, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
A Decline in Stemness in Many Human Stem Cell Populations with Aging
In conclusion, we assigned stemness scores to human samples and show evidence of a pan-tissue loss of stemness during human aging, which adds weight to the idea that stem cell deterioration may contribute to human aging. (Source: Fight Aging!)
Source: Fight Aging! - April 22, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Exercise, Stress, and Cardiovascular Risk
Exercise is well known to correlate with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease in human epidemiological studies. In animal studies, it is possible to demonstrate that increased physical activity does in fact cause a lower incidence of cardiovascular disease. Here researchers argue that stress has a significant effect on cardiovascular outcomes, as demonstrated by the fact that patients with greater degrees of stress, such as those with major depressive disorder, exhibit a larger beneficial correlation of reduced cardiovascular disease with exercise. It is interesting to ask which mechanisms are causing this association; e...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 22, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Assessing Age-Related Changes in Muscle Stem Cell Biochemistry
Researchers here discuss some of the results achieved in building the Human Skeletal Muscle Aging Atlas. Focusing on stem cells in muscle tissue, they find numerous changes in gene expression relating to inflammation and reduced activity. The chronic inflammation characteristic of aging, provoked by senescent cells and innate immune reactions to molecular damage, is known to be involved in many of the dysfunctions of aging. Loss of stem cell activity, and thus a reduced supply of daughter somatic cells to replace losses and repair damage, is one of those dysfunctions.
Skeletal muscle aging is a key contributor to ...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 22, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, April 22nd 2024
This study reveals a potential treatment for human mitochondrial diseases.
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A Population Study Correlates Air Pollution with Faster Cognitive Aging
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2024/04/a-population-study-correlates-air-pollution-with-faster-cognitive-aging/
A number of large epidemiological studies provide evidence for long-term exposure to greater levels of air pollution to accelerate the onset and progression of age-related disease. A few of these manage to control for the tendency for wealthier people to avoid living in areas with higher particulate air pollution, ...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 21, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Parkinson's Disease in the SENS View of Damage Repair
The Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) is a view of aging as accumulated damage. Drawing from the extensive scientific literature on aging, the originators of SENS created an outline of the forms of cell and tissue damage that are fundamental causes of aging, in that they occur as a natural side-effect of the normal operation of our cellular biochemistry. So we might consider the loss of vital cells due to declining stem cell function, mutations to nuclear DNA and mitochondrial DNA, cross-linking of vital molecules in the extracellular matrix, accumulated metabolic waste in long-lived cells, generation ...
Source: Fight Aging! - April 19, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
