In most European countries, electoral rules are such that it is possible to conduct effective advocacy for a cause via a single issue political party. Successful examples include the Green Party and the Pirate Party, but there are many others. In the ... [Continue Reading]
Microtubule Activity in Dopaminergic Neurons Affects the Pace of Aging in Flies
In an interesting discovery, researchers here note evidence for the behavior of dopamine generating neurons in the fly brain to have an sizable influence on the pace of aging and longevity in this species. This effect on aging appears to depend on ... [Continue Reading]
MicroRNA miR-218-5p in Follicle Regeneration for Hair Regrowth
As a general rule, people care too much about their hair and too little about their blood vessels. One can live without hair. It is interesting to see both (a) just how much work goes into the regeneration of lost hair, and (b) just how little is ... [Continue Reading]
Long-Lived Trees are Not Immortal
Trees can adopt a range of strategies not available to animals in order to live for very long periods of time, but they are not immune to mechanisms of aging. That said, those mechanisms are only broadly similar to the biochemistry of aging in ... [Continue Reading]
Reviewing the Mechanisms of Alzheimer’s Disease
The present understanding of Alzheimer's disease is illustrative of a broader issue with aging in general, in that while there is considerable evidence to pin down specific pathological mechanisms in cells and tissues, it is hard to prove exactly how ... [Continue Reading]
Fitness in Humans Acts to Reduce Inflammation, But Does Not Reduce the Burden of Cellular Senescence in Muscle Tissue
Fitness produced by training is here shown to correlate with reduced inflammatory signaling, but has no effect on the burden of senescent cells in old muscle tissue. This is interesting, as the accumulation of senescent cells with age is responsible ... [Continue Reading]
An Age-Related Increase in CD47 Expression Impairs Vascular Function
Researchers here provide evidence to indicate that increased expression of CD47 in aged blood vessels impairs a range of functions, from maintenance of these tissues to the generation of new blood vessels. The latter point is interesting given that ... [Continue Reading]
Eating Ourselves into Shorter, Less Healthy Lives
We humans have not evolved for optimal function given a continually high calorie intake. We, and all other species, evolved in an environment characterized by periods of feast and famine: we desire food constantly, but nonetheless need some amount of ... [Continue Reading]
Cognitive Decline is Accelerated by Hypertension, Diabetes, and Smoking
The raised blood pressure of hypertension can be minimized with age by staying thin and active, type 2 diabetes is near entirely avoidable via much the same strategy, and smoking is just a bad idea. There is a mountain of evidence in each case for ... [Continue Reading]
Naked Mole-Rat Senescent Cells are Unusually Vulnerable to Oxidative Stress
This open access paper expands on earlier work on cellular senescence in long-lived naked mole-rats. Individuals of this species can live as much as nine times longer than equivalently sized rodents, and are near immune to cancer. In other mammals, ... [Continue Reading]
Glucosamine Supplementation Correlates with Lower All Cause Mortality
An analysis of a large study population here shows that glucosamine supplementation results in about a 15% reduction in mortality, a sizable effect size in the context of what is known of the effects of lifestyle choices and supplementation on aging. ... [Continue Reading]
Organoids Used to Identify NRG1 as a Regulator of Tissue Repair in the Intestine
The intestinal lining is an important tissue. Among its other functions, it protects the body from inflammation that can be generated by the actions of gut microbes. This barrier declines with age, and this is thought to be influential in the ... [Continue Reading]
Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment Improves Cerebral Blood Flow in a Small Clinical Trial
In the study noted here, researchers provide evidence for a few months of hyperbaric oxygen treatment to increase blood flow to the brain, perhaps in large part by spurring greater growth of small blood vessels in brain tissue. In older patients this ... [Continue Reading]
Evidence for Stochastic Mitochondrial DNA Mutation in Mice to Largely be a Result of DNA Replication
Mitochondria, the power plants of the cell, are the distant descendants of ancient symbiotic bacteria. They contain their own remnant mitochondrial DNA, a small genome distinct from that in the nucleus. This DNA is, unfortunately, less well protected ... [Continue Reading]
Old Individuals with High Cognitive Function Exhibit Lower Accumulation of Amyloid-β and Tau
Neurodegenerative conditions are largely marked by the accumulation of a few different types of toxic protein aggregate, both amyloid-β and tau in the case of Alzheimer's disease. These few types of protein are capable of alteration in ways that seed ... [Continue Reading]
Chronic Neurovascular Inflammation in the Aging Brain
The evidence strongly suggests that chronic inflammation in brain tissue is of great importance in the onset and progression of age-related neurodegenerative conditions. Overactivation of the immune system, resulting in chronic inflammation, is a ... [Continue Reading]
A Small Study Shows Improved Memory in Old People Subject to Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation
There is very mixed data for the ability of electromagnetic stimulation to improve cognitive function. One recent study suggests that this is because the way in which such stimulation is applied, the details of frequency, power, timing, and so forth, ... [Continue Reading]
Reviewing the Evidence for Gum Disease to Contribute to Alzheimer’s Disease
There is good mechanistic evidence for the bacteria responsible for gum disease, periodontitis, to contribute directly to age-related inflammation in the heart, brain, and other organs, and thus raise the risk of suffering cardiovascular disease, ... [Continue Reading]
Small Extracellular Vesicles and the Balance of Signals Between Normal and Senescent Cells in Aging Tissues
In this study, researchers show that small extracellular vesicles can influence the functional status of old tissues. These vesicles are membrane-bound packages of molecules that are used by cells as a form of communication, constantly secreted and ... [Continue Reading]
Type V Collagen Regulates the Degree of Scarring Following Heart Attack
The heart regenerates poorly in mammals; functional tissue is replaced by scar tissue following injury, such as a the damaged caused in a heart attack. Researchers have recently found that type V collagen is an important determinant of the extent of ... [Continue Reading]
An Overactive Immune System Protects Against Infection at the Cost of More Rapid Aging
Greater immune activity implies greater inflammation, which has a negative impact on tissue function if maintained over time. In aging, a great deal of damage is done by the chronic inflammation of an overactive immune system. Researchers here ... [Continue Reading]
Efforts Continue to Use COVID-19 as a Learning Moment Regarding the Costs of Aging
Near everyone who dies from the SARS-Cov-2 virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic is old. The old are vulnerable firstly because their immune systems are much diminished in effectiveness, and secondly because the state of chronic inflammation ... [Continue Reading]