longecity.org

Researchers here note the discovery of a non-invasive biomarker that can measure the pace of destruction of senescent cells. This could be used to more rapidly quantify the effectiveness of potential senolytic treatments, those capable of destroying senescent cells, thus speeding up development of the next generation of senolytic drugs. Readily available small molecule treatments (such as the dasatinib and quercetin combination) can...

Upward trends in longevity started as least as early as the 16th century in some parts of the world, and earlier elsewhere. In England, it is thought that an intertwined slow growth in life expectancy and economic productivity over hundreds of years laid the foundations for the Industrial Revolution. People who expect to live longer are better stewards of long-term capital investment, and even small gains year over year compound over...

There is a much greater awareness in the scientific community of the importance of cellular senescence to aging. Senescent cells are influential in the progression of many facets of aging and age-related disease, and a new industry is working to produce senolytic therapies to clear senescent cells from old tissues. Further, there is funding and interesting for investigations of the many specific ways in which senescent cells cause...

An interesting result is reported in today's open access preprint paper. The authors find that the life span of mice is extended by 20% or so after treatment every few weeks with serum albumin, beginning in mid-life. The researchers base their approach on noting that aging is characterized by modification of circulating serum albumin molecules, and theorize that a significant fraction of the issues arising with age are reactions to...

Researchers here applied three months of a methionine restricted diet to old mice, and found that it greatly reduced age-related cognitive decline, as measured in maze tests. The methionine restricted animals perform more like young animals than like their unrestricted peers. Methionine is an essential amino acid essential to all protein synthesis. Methionine sensing is one of the more important triggers by which the beneficial...

Particulate air pollution is generally agreed upon to be harmful to long-term health, particularly from sources prevalent in poorer regions of the world such as the smoke from wood fires used for cooking. Exposure to these airborne particles raises the burden of chronic inflammation, thus accelerating the onset and progression of all of the common age-related diseases, including cardiovascular disease and dementia, and increasing...

Tau is involved in Alzheimer's disease and other tauopathies; it is one of the few proteins in the body capable of becoming naturally altered in ways that encourage aggregation of the protein into solid deposits that are toxic to cells. Tau is highly expressed in nerve cells, and helps in the function of the microtubule network of the cell. It also has roles in other processes peculiar to nerve cells, such as synaptic transmission....

Transient ischemia is the loss of blood supply to tissue followed by its restoration, leading to cell death, tissue damage, and harmful cell signaling. While the paper here is focused on connecting the significant ischemia of stroke with the later development of Alzheimer's disease, it is also the case that aging brains undergo many unnoticed, tiny ischemic events over the years. These minuscule strokes have the same root cause as...

It may turn out to be the case that many mechanisms of cellular regulation that slow aspects of aging function, at least in part, by slowing the pace at which senescent cells accumulate. Senescent cells induce tissue dysfunction via inflammatory signaling. Studies in which senescent cells are selectively destroyed in old tissues via senolytic drugs have resulted in rejuvenation, showing that the accumulation of these errant cells has a...