Aging & Longevity

CONCLUSIONS: CT-based body composition changes, atrophy of thigh muscles in particular, are associated with loss of muscle strength and physical performance.

Advances in our understanding of the biology of skeletal muscle ageing are being made at pace, with great potential for these findings to inform the identification of novel treatments for sarcopenia. However, translation of findings from animal models to humans has been hampered by limitations of existing human muscle biopsy studies. Devised to directly address this challenge, the Muscle Ageing and Sarcopenia Study (MASS) Lifecourse is a novel resource for the study of human muscle ageing. This...

Introduction Physical and cognitive impairment constitute large burdens of disease in older adults, but may be preventable through reduction of modifiable risk factors. While chronic stress has been linked to cognitive and physical function separately, few studies have accounted for combined decline. This study assessed associations between exposure to stressful life events (SLEs) and cognitive decline, physical decline, and combined physical and cognitive decline. Methods Data were taken from...

Although its evolutionary origins remain poorly understood, sleep is a highly conserved physiological process crucial to animal life and widely recognized as a major determinant of human healthspan. Sleep disturbances are a major public health concern, particularly among older adults, contributing to impaired cognitive function, chronic disease risk, and reduced quality of life. Age-related sleep disturbances are associated with epigenetic changes, especially altered DNA methylation patterns...

Oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinomas (OPSCCs) frequently result from oncogenic human papilloma virus (HPV) infections (HPV-OPSCC). The mechanisms underlying effective immune escape, despite abundant viral antigens, are incompletely understood. Here, we performed single-cell spatial gene expression profiling of HPV-OPSCC to characterize cellular organization and mechanisms of immune resistance. We describe distinct tumor-parenchymal immune foci that differ in cytokine expression, spatial...

Oogenesis requires complex interactions between germline and somatic cell types in the ovary. How did these cell types and their signaling interactions evolve? Here we use the sea star Patiria miniata as a non-chordate deuterostome representative to define the ovarian cell type toolkit in echinoderms. Sea stars continuously produce millions of new oocytes throughout their lifespan, making them a practical system to understand the mechanisms that drive oogenesis from a biomedical and evolutionary...

CONCLUSIONS: When integrating DASSCF into SHF, WT should be as supportive as possible without being too intrusive, allowing older adults to feel strengthened while ensuring their safety and independence.

CONCLUSION: Frailty or pre-frailty increases odds of AF recurrence or persistence at two years, underscoring the potential role of biological aging in influencing the course of AF over time. AF recurrence or persistence was associated with greater hazards of major bleeding, even after adjustment for key clinical factors, suggesting residual risk not captured by measured covariates.

CONCLUSION: An increase in age comes with an increase in care management demands, with concerns affecting the management and strategies adopted in coping with care for older adults. Since the Nigerian society does not support institutionalized homes for older adults, we recommend the utilization of social workers' services in family settings, through providing appropriate care management strategies and services for older adults and their family caregivers.

CONCLUSION: Aging policies must move beyond traditional assumptions of filial support, as empirical evidence uncovers that broader informal ties-particularly instrumental networks-now exert a stronger relative impact on well-being than traditional family care. Furthermore, HCBS is not a one-size-fits-all solution; its benefits are geographically masked, primarily accruing to rural and functionally capable elders. The interplay between formal and informal care features emotional synergy and...

CONCLUSIONS: This study challenges the prevailing assumption that the "digital divide inevitably isolates the older adults from participating in a digitized society." By integrating digital technologies into older adults care services, we demonstrate that smart elderly care is positively associated with bridging technological barriers and addressing the unmet needs of aging populations. These findings further propose a synergistic mechanism-policy innovation, technological adaptation, and...

CONCLUSIONS: Multidomain predictors spanning objective movement behaviours, body-composition indicators, and built-environment measures showed value for identifying education-stratified MoCA-defined MCI in community-dwelling older adults. LightGBM achieved the best overall performance among the candidate models. These findings support the potential utility of integrating behavioural, biological, and environmental information for community-based cognitive-risk stratification, although external...

CONCLUSION: Operational definitions of multimorbidity substantially influence prevalence estimates, while associations with mortality appear more robust across count-based approaches. Clustering analyses provide complementary insights into heterogeneity within multimorbid populations. Future translational studies are warranted to determine how multimorbidity definitions can be optimized to ultimately improve clinical management and health outcomes in practice.

Metaplasticity is homeostatic regulation of brain excitability through which neurons change their threshold for response based on synaptic history. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) induced metaplastic shifts in cortical excitability have been shown to improve motor learning in older adults. However, this has not been explored in the context of a fatiguing contraction. We aimed to explore modulation of fatiguing exercise performance, corticospinal excitability and gamma-aminobutyric...

As a cutaneous appendage, the hair follicle is tightly associated with the skin during growth, pigmentation, and aging. These two interconnected tissues share evolutionarily conserved regulatory mechanisms-including stem cell niche signaling, inflammatory cascades, and oxidative stress-and collectively function as hallmarks of systemic organismal aging. Hair abnormalities are well-established concomitant manifestations of aged skin. The crosstalk between skin aging and hair aging is particularly...

Declining tissue function and regenerative capacity underlie many chronic diseases. Experimentally establishing the mechanistic basis for such tissue aging presents substantial challenges, given decades-long timescales and multifactorial origins. Epigenetic alterations have been proposed to have a key etiological role, but whether they are correlative or causal remains a key unanswered question, as does their contribution to specific age-related pathologies. Here we describe an epigenetically...

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WNT proteins have been recognized as key regulators of skeletal health. However, developing WNT-associated bone anabolic agents is clinically challenging and expensive. Here we identify the reconstructed thumb and index domains of WNT7B (WNT7B^(RTID)) as a WNT-derived bone anabolic peptide via Alphafold-empowered sequence prediction and in silico docking screening. In aged mice and pigs models of osteoporosis, WNT7B^(RTID) peptides demonstrate therapeutic potential by improving the osteogenic...

Adipose tissue has emerged as a dynamic endocrine organ that coordinates systemic energy balance and cardiometabolic health. This Review highlights the dual humoral and neuronal pathways through which adipose tissue regulates systemic metabolism. Humoral signals include peptide hormones, lipid mediators, metabolites, chemokines and exosomal microRNAs secreted by adipose depots. Neuronal circuits control adipose function rapidly and precisely: sympathetic efferents trigger lipolysis in white...

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