Being more physically fit at a given age reliably correlates with a lower future mortality risk. While human epidemiological data can only provide correlations, animal studies can and do provide evidence for physical fitness and exercise to modestly slow aspects of aging and reduce age-related mortality. In general, maintaining physical fitness into later life appears to be a good idea, based on the evidence. Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is a physical trait that reflects the integrated function of numerous bodily systems to deliver and use oxygen to support muscle activity during sustained ..read more

Transposable elements in the genome are the remnants of ancient viral infections, capable of hijacking cellular machinery to copy themselves haphazardly across the genome, causing damage to existing genes. They can further provoke inflammation and cell dysfunction via the presence of the viral machinery that these transposable element sequences code for; innate immune mechanisms in cells have evolved to detect such apparently foreign molecules. Transposable elements are effectively suppressed in youth, but with age this suppression breaks down. It has been suggested that activation of transpos ..read more

Researchers here report on the importance of molecular chaperones, and cyclophilin A in particular, to the function of hematopoietic stem cells. These cells generate red blood cells and immune cells, and thus age-related changes in hematopoietic function have important consequences for health. The immune system runs awry with age, and altered hematopoiesis is one of the contributing factors. If, as researchers here suggest, upregulation of cyclophilin A can improve hematopoietic stem cell function, then using this as a basis for therapy may produce health benefits in older individuals. Hemato ..read more

Researchers here report on their efforts to interfere in a mechanism causing loss of the myelin that sheathes nerves. The driving goal is to produce a therapy for the severe demyelinating disease of multiple sclerosis rather than to reverse the lesser degree of myelin loss that occurs for everyone in later life. The animal evidence suggests that it may also prove to be useful in the general population of older individuals, however, which is promising. Loss of myelin is thought to contribute to some fraction of age-related loss of cognitive function, and so reversing that loss is an important g ..read more

One of the important points made by advocates for the treatment of aging is that one cannot distinguish between aging and age-related disease. They are one and the same. There is no magical state of "healthy aging" in which one doesn't suffer eventual disease. A decline of function in aging that does not rise to the level required to call it a disease is the subclinical stage of that disease; all the same damage has taken place under the hood, just less of it. Conversely, an age-related disease is just another facet of aging, a collection of damage and consequences of damage that becomes sizab ..read more

Microglia are innate immune cells resident in the brain, analogous to macrophages elsewhere in the body, but with the addition of a portfolio of duties relating to the maintenance of neural function. With age ever more microglia become overly inflammatory, contributing to disruptive, unresolved inflammatory signaling, and abandoning their tissue maintenance tasks. This is thought to be an important contribution to neurodegenerative conditions and loss of cognitive function more generally. Researchers here report that the adoption of an inflammatory state is a progressive dysfunction for indivi ..read more

As an atherosclerotic plaque grows into a hotspot of inflammation and cell dysfunction in a blood vessel wall, it starts to draw in the nearby vascular smooth muscle cells that wrap the outside of the vessel. As researchers here note, these smooth muscle cells are altered by the plaque environment in ways that are analogous to the behavior of cancerous cells. They change, multiply, and accelerate the growth of a fatty plaque that will eventually rupture to cause a stroke or heart attack by blocking a downstream blood vessel. Atherosclerosis is the major cause of heart attacks and stroke aroun ..read more

Chronic, unresolved inflammation is a feature of aging. When the immune system is constantly active in this way, the consequent altered cell behavior throughout the body becomes disruptive to tissue and organ function, harmful to the individual. Chronic inflammation accelerates the onset and progression of all of the common fatal age-related conditions. This unwanted inflammatory signaling arises from many different roots, including the growing presence of senescent cells, but also the interaction of innate immune sensors with other forms of age-related dysfunction. For example, damage-associa ..read more

Dasatinib and quercetin used in combination clears a fraction of lingering senescent cells in aging mice, producing a sizable degree of rejuvenation, and reversal of aspects of many different age-related conditions. In humans, clinical trials are underway at a sedate pace. Dasatinib is a chemotherapeutic small molecule, while quercetin is a plant extract flavonol. Here, researchers discuss their search for plant extract alternatives that mimic the effects of dasatinib, in the hopes of producing a less regulated alternative to the use of a small molecule drug, thereby lowering the barrier to en ..read more

Researchers have found evidence of cellular senescence in neurons in the aging brain. How do neurons become senescent, given that they are post-mitotic, non-dividing cells? Cellular senescence is state primarily associated with excessive cell division, in which a cell reaches the Hayflick limit, though cells can become senescent in response to damage or toxicity. Here, researchers provide evidence to show that in the aging brain, and particularly in the context of neurodegenerative conditions, ever more neurons re-enter the cell cycle, which inevitably leads to senescence. This is an interesti ..read more