Aging & Longevity

In the United States, older adults who self-identify as Black have a disproportionately higher incidence of mobility disability compared to those who are White. Whether older adults who are Black also have lower fitness and mitochondrial energetics has not been adequately investigated. The study of muscle, mobility and aging (SOMMA) examined 879 participants aged ≥ 70 years old, including 116 who self-identified as Black. Mitochondrial respiration (Max OXPHOS) was measured in permeabilized...

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Early vascular aging plays a central role in chronic kidney disease (CKD), but its molecular causes remain unclear. Somatic mutations accumulate in various cells with age, yet their functional contribution to aging tissues is not well understood. Here we found progerin, the protein responsible for the premature aging disease Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome, steadily recurring in vascular smooth muscle cells of patients with CKD. Notably, the most common progeria-causing mutation, LMNA...

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Cellular senescence, a major contributor to aging and age-related pathologies, is characterized by irreversible proliferative arrest and a disease-linked, proinflammatory profile known as the Senescence Associated Secretory Phenotype (SASP). A critical unanswered question is whether these properties are regulated by specific enhancer subsets, potentially licensing strategies that selectively block deleterious SASP components. Here, we identify two functionally distinct and independently...

CONCLUSIONS: Depression was prevalent among the oldest-old in India. Appropriate intervention strategies should be applied to prevent MMD among the oldest-old in India.

Advanced age is the most important risk factor for dementia. Measures of biological ageing such as DNA methylation age (DNAmAge) can give more information about the accumulation of age-related molecular damage in different organs than chronological age alone. Using post-mortem brain tissue from Swedish Twin Registry participants, we explored the relationship between lifestyle factors, dementia and DNAmAge measures from prefrontal cortex and cerebellum (n = 27 individuals) and paired blood...

Telomere shortening occurs in multiple tissues throughout aging. When telomeres become critically short, they trigger DNA-damage responses and p53 stabilization, leading to apoptosis or replicative senescence. In vitro, cells with short telomeres activate the cGAS-STING innate immune pathway resulting in type-I interferon-based inflammation and senescence. However, the consequences of these events for the organism are not yet understood. Here, we show that sting is responsible for premature...

CONCLUSIONS: Empty-nest older adults in the Chinese community show a desirable level of healthy ageing and psychological resilience, yet there is still room for improvement. Those who live with their spouses, have retirement pensions, engage regularly in social activities, and demonstrate strong psychological resilience tend to achieve a higher level of healthy ageing. Policies and strategies could focus on creating a more supportive environment, reducing health inequities among empty-nest older...

A strong association exists between exposure to life stressors and accelerated aging in humans and animal models. However, the molecular mechanisms that underlie the adverse effect of stress on aging remain poorly characterized, and there is a paucity of prognostic predictors of stress-induced disease outcomes and life expectancy. To address this gap, we developed mathematical models to predict remaining lifespan based on healthspan data across two independent cohorts which were part of a large...

Epigenetic drift, which is gradual age-related changes in DNA methylation patterns, plays a significant role in aging and age-related diseases. However, the relationship between exercise, epigenetics, and aging, and the molecular mechanisms underlying their interactions are poorly understood. Here, we investigated the relationship between cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF), epigenetic aging, and promoter methylation of individual genes across multiple organs in selectively bred low- and...

Brain precapillary sphincters, which are surrounded by contractile pericytes and are located at the junction of penetrating arterioles and first-order capillaries, can increase their diameter by ~ 30% in a few seconds during sensory stimulation, allowing for rapid control of capillary blood flow over a wide dynamic range. We hypothesized that these properties could help precapillary sphincters maintain the capillary blood flow and shield the downstream capillaries during surges in blood...

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CONCLUSION: Contrary to our hypothesis, older adults displayed more efficient heat-CPM, independent of chronic pain. Similarly, motor unit control was mostly influenced by age but not chronic knee pain. These findings suggest that age-related changes in pain modulation and motor unit behavior may play a greater role in neuromuscular function than the presence of chronic pain itself.

Tracking the envelope of speech in the brain is important for speech comprehension. Recent research suggests that acoustic background noise can enhance neural speech tracking, enabling the auditory system to robustly encode speech even under unfavorable conditions. Aging and hearing loss are associated with internal, neural noise in the auditory system, raising the question whether additional acoustic background noise enhances neural speech tracking in older adults. In the current...

Pathological events often impact tissue regions in a spatially variable manner, making it challenging to identify therapeutic targets. Spatial transcriptomics (ST) is a powerful technology to map spatially variable molecular mechanisms, yet suitable analytical methods have been lacking. We introduce spatially resolved pathology score (SPaSE), an optimal transport-based algorithm to compare ST data from diseased and control tissues. SPaSE computes a "pathology score" for each spot in the diseased...

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Vitamin D supplementation produced no measurable improvement in cognitive outcomes in older adults with mild to moderate vitamin D deficiency. The remote trial methodology provides an innovative approach to large-scale trials.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Adherence to plant-based dietary patterns was associated with a lower likelihood of being on an unfavorable depressive trajectory, whereas an unhealthy plant-based diet was associated with an increased likelihood of being on an unfavorable depressive trajectory.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Although health profiles may help identify conditions most likely impacting health of PWH, frailty may be key to identifying those having the highest needs and at risk for greater home time loss following SNF stays, with this impact varying by age.