Reviewing the Potential for Klotho as a Basis for Therapy
Klotho is one of the few robustly longevity-associated genes discovered over the past few decades. Increased levels of the circulating α-klotho protein slows aging in mice and is associated with better late life health in humans. Additionally, more of this α-klotho appears to slow cognitive aging and also boost cognitive function in younger animals. While klotho is thought to be primarily active in the kidneys, and thus indicates the importance of declining kidney function in degenerative aging, researchers are discovering potentially relevant interactions in the brain. It remains an open question as to how exactly kloth...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 24, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
What Do Fats Do in the Body?
It’s common knowledge that too much cholesterol and other fats can lead to disease and that a healthy diet involves watching how much fatty food we eat. However, our bodies need a certain amount of fat to function—and we can’t make it from scratch.
Hepatocytes, like the one shown here, are the most abundant type of cell in the human liver. One important role they play is producing bile, a liquid that aids in digesting fats. Credit: Donna Beer Stolz, University of Pittsburgh.
Triglycerides, cholesterol, and other essential fatty acids—the fats our bodies can’t make on their own—store energy, ins...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - January 24, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Chrissa Chverchko Tags: Cells Chemistry, Biochemistry and Pharmacology Common questions Source Type: blogs
Icariin Extends Life in Nematode Worms
Icariin supplementation has been shown to improve health and the state of the gut microbiome in mice, and appears to be neuroprotective in other studies. Here researchers show that icariin extends life in nematode worms by affecting the well-studied DAF-2 gene, and to a similar degree to DAF-2 mutation. Whether all of this will translate to an interesting effect size in humans remains to be seen; other interventions that alter metabolism, particularly this area of metabolic regulation, have produced diminishing returns in longer-lived species, where there is data to directly compare.
Aging presents an increasingly...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 24, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Which Aspects of Inflammation are Important in Alzheimer's Disease?
Researchers are coming to see chronic inflammation as an important driving mechanism of Alzheimer's disease, as well as many other age-related conditions. But inflammation is by no means a single, simple state. The immune system is complex, and inflammation is a complex collection of contributions and behaviors undertaken by varied cell populations. Researchers here find a way to gain some insight into which aspects of the inflammatory state are more or less important in the progression of Alzheimer's disease.
Inflammation is a central component of Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathophysiology, downstream of amyloid be...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 24, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Commentary on Gaps in the Knowledge of Aging
There are any number of sizable gaps in the understanding of how aging progresses at the detail level, which processes are more or less important, the direct of causation for many different interactions, and so forth. Aging is very complex because a living organism is very complex. Even simply causes produce complex outcomes when operating in a complex system. The same sizable gaps in understanding exist when we ask how and why aging evolved to be near universal across the tree of life, given that physical immortality appears possible for lower animals, and for much the same reasons. The evolutionary landscape is a complic...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 23, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Continued Efforts to Produce Universal Pluripotent Stem Cells
Publicity materials here note a recent research initiative to produce pluripotent stem cell lines that will not be rejected when transplanted into other individuals, or even between species. This technological capability is necessary to the development of new forms of regenerative medicine, allowing the production of universal donor cells and tissues at reasonable cost. While the results sound impressive, it is worth noting that several large and well-funded pharma companies have been developing earlier, first generation versions of this technology for some years, accompanied by many smaller research groups and companies. ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 23, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Correlations Between Chronic Inflammation and Poverty and Raised Risk of Mortality
Researchers here report on an epidemiological analysis of the effects of relative poverty and chronic inflammation on health and life span. It is well known that socioeconomic status correlates with mortality and life expectancy. There is a great deal of debate over which of the numerous mechanisms potentially involved in this correlation contribute the largest share of the effect size. Separately, chronic inflammation is disruptive to tissue structure and function, increases with age, and is known to increase risk and accelerate progression of all of the common age-related fatal conditions. As one might expect, the povert...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 23, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
LEV Foundation on Senolytics as One Part of a Combination Rejuvenation Therapy
The primary focus of the Longevity Escape Velocity (LEV) Foundation is to demonstrate that therapies based on the repair of forms of underlying molecular damage that cause aging can be combined to produce greater rejuvenation. Research of recent years has demonstrated quite comprehensively that the alternative strategy for treating aging, to manipulate metabolism into a state in which aging occurs modestly more slowly, has so far produced therapies that largely cannot be combined. The combination of any two or more metabolic alterations, induced by supplements or other small molecules, that individually modestly slow aging...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 22, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
Does Peripheral Blood Amyloid- β Contribute to Alzheimer's Disease via Inflammatory Mechanisms?
Amyloid-β is found in the bloodstream and blood vessels as well as in the brain, and an increase in this peripheral amyloid-β is noted in Alzheimer's disease patients who exhibit the characteristic amyloid-β aggregates in their brains. Current thinking is that there is a dynamic equilibrium between amyloid-β in the brain and body, and based on this view some success has been achieved in reducing amyloid-β in the brain by clearing amyloid-β in the rest of the body. Does this peripheral amyloid-β contribute to the onset of Alzheimer's disease in other ways, however? Researchers here suggest that it may increase the bu...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 22, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
The Germline Impacts Life Span
One evolutionary perspective on life is that the individuals making up a species are secondary concerns, mere wrappers for the all-important germline cells. Evolution optimizes for success in propagation of the germline lineage, not the success of the individual. With that in mind, one might expect to find that the germline can influence the body. That influence doesn't have to be a net positive for the individual, as noted here. The individual is disposable, and health only matters insofar as it enhances reproductive fitness in the eternal, ever-shifting arms race that takes place over evolutionary time.
Classica...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 22, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, January 22nd 2024
In this study, we found that DMC reduced the SASP level in senescent cells. Furthermore, senescent cells enter irreversible cell cycle arrest, which involves the activation of p53/p21 and Rb/p16. In this study we found that the expression levels of p21 and p16 were decreased after DMC treatment. The downregulation of p21 may be attributed to the decrease of p53. In this study, we found that the mRNA level of p53 was reduced after DMC treatment.
Ferroptosis is an iron-dependent cell death process, which is accompanied by iron accumulation. Our previous study reported an important role of FECH, an enzyme inserts ferro...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 21, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
Genetic Associations with Longevity are Stronger in Women
In this study, we discovered that genetic associations with longevity are on average stronger in females than in males through bio-demographic analyses of genome-wide association studies (GWAS) dataset of 2178 centenarians and 2299 middle-age controls of Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Study (CLHLS). This discovery is replicated across North and South regions of China, and is further confirmed by North-South discovery/replication analyses of different and independent datasets of Chinese healthy aging candidate genes with CLHLS participants who are not in CLHLS GWAS, including 2972 centenarians and 1992 middle-age co...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 19, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
OXR1 and Retromer Function in Aging
Researchers here employ a combination of genetic manipulation and calorie restriction in order to find mechanisms that might be important in aging. This leads them to retromer function, where the retromer is a complex system involved in recycling receptor proteins found in the cell membrane. Reduced retromer function leads to changes in cell behavior and survival that contribute to aging and disease. The gene OXR1 is necessary for retromer function, but its expression declines with age, suggesting it as a target for therapies to slow this aspect of age-related cellular dysfunction.
Dietary restriction (DR) delays ...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 19, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
A Novel Proteomic Aging Clock
By now there are most likely dozens of published aging clocks constructed from various omics databases. The proliferation of new clocks isn't helping to solve the fundamental problem with this approach to assessing biological age, which is that the predicted biological age produced by a clock isn't actionable, as no-one yet understands how the clocks relate to causative processes of aging. Thus factions within the research community are arguing for standardization to a single clock, followed by focused effort on understand how those clock measurements relate to underlying processes of aging.
Using a large proteomi...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 19, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Chronic Inflammation and Mitochondrial Dysfunction Interact in the Production of Sarcopenia
Sarcopenia is the name given to the later stages of the characteristic loss of muscle mass and strength that occurs in every individual with aging, eventually leading to weakness and the state of frailty. There are many possible contributing mechanisms, and those mechanisms interact with one another. One important cause is loss of muscle stem cell activity, but this may be driven by any number of other aspects of aging. Another important contribution is dysfunction of neuromuscular junctions, as loss of innervation tends to have a negative impact on tissue maintenance. This again may be driven by any number of causative me...
Source: Fight Aging! - January 18, 2024 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs
