Aging & Longevity

Aging is a key driver of cardiac dysfunction, promoting structural remodeling, metabolic alterations, and loss of cellular resilience. In aged hearts, extracellular matrix remodeling and collagen accumulation reduce ventricular compliance, impairing both diastolic function and stress adaptability. Cardiomyocytes exhibit diminished regenerative capacity and dysregulated stress responses, with mitochondrial dysfunction emerging as a central contributor to energy imbalance, oxidative stress, and...

Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are a global source of hospitalization, long-term disability, and death. However, age, sex, and other demographics differ widely among patients and the variable characteristics of TBIs further obscure injury outcomes. Here, we used Drosophila melanogaster to assess the effects of mild, repeated TBI (multi-day, MD) compared to single, severe TBI (single-day, SD). In all genotypes tested, flies given an SD injury exhibited higher acute mortality, but in some...

Tendon degeneration is common, and its risk increases with age both in humans and horses. Tendon regeneration and healing is limited due to inherent low cell density and vascularisation, and current treatments are insufficient as indicated by scar tissue formation and a high re-injury rate. The tendon vasculature plays a crucial role in tendon homeostasis, regeneration and healing, making it a potential therapeutic target. However, the effect of ageing on the tendon microvasculature is poorly...

Down syndrome, caused by an extra copy of Chromosome 21, causes lifelong problems. One of the most common phenotypes among people with Down syndrome is premature aging, including early tissue decline, neurodegeneration, and shortened life span. Yet the reasons for premature systemic aging are a mystery and difficult to study in humans. Here we show that chromosome amplification in wild yeast also produces premature aging and shortens life span. Chromosome duplication disrupts nutrient-induced...

Aging compromises intestinal integrity, yet the chromatin changes driving this decline remain unclear. Polycomb-mediated repression is essential for silencing developmental genes, but this regulatory mechanism becomes dysregulated with age. Although shifts in Polycomb regulation within intestinal stem cells have been linked to gut aging, the Polycomb landscape of differentiated cell types remains unexplored. Differentiated cells comprise the majority of the gut epithelium and directly impact...

CONCLUSIONS: SUA is significantly associated with frailty in both community and surgical populations. In community population, a U-shaped relationship was observed, whereas only high SUA levels predict frailty perioperatively. Females are more susceptible to SUA-related frailty.

Limited identification of insulin resistance-associated loci hinders understanding of its role in cardiometabolic health, impeding therapeutic strategies. We apply three multivariate genome-wide association study approaches on homeostatic model assessment for insulin resistance, insulin resistance index, fasting insulin, and ratio of triglycerides to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol from MAGIC and UK Biobank to develop a comprehensive phenotype ('mvIR'), and identify 217 independent loci,...

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Somatic mutation is now recognized as a cause of multiple human diseases other than cancer. Osteoarthritis (OA), a highly prevalent age-related disease, has been associated with increased chromosomal abnormalities in articular cartilage. Here we characterize the somatic mutational landscape of chondrocytes during normal aging and in affected cartilage of patients with OA. We used single-cell whole-genome sequencing to analyze single-nucleotide variants (SNVs) and small insertions and deletions...

A systematic investigation of aging patterns across virtually all major tissues in nonhuman primates, our evolutionarily closest relatives, can provide valuable insights into tissue aging in humans, which is still elusive largely due to the difficulty in sampling. Here, we generated and analyzed multi-omics data, including transcriptome, proteome and metabolome, from 30 tissues of 17 female rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) aged 3-27 years. We found that certain molecular features, such as...

Elucidating the impact of aging on the structure and function of neurons is key to understanding the mechanisms underlying synaptic dysfunction and ensuing susceptibility to age-related cognitive decline. The role of structural alterations in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) has been extensively addressed. In addition, numerous studies point to the importance of inflammation and the increase of oxidative stress during aging, with mitochondria as one of the key cellular organelles involved....

Humanitarian emergencies, including wars, forced displacements, sudden onset disasters, and pandemics, disproportionately affect older persons. This scoping review aims to map and synthesise existing studies on the care needs of older persons in such contexts, emphasising needs directly reported by the older persons themselves. A literature search was conducted on PubMed and EMBASE, focusing on qualitative studies that reported care needs of older persons in the context of humanitarian crises....

Ovarian aging is a complex process that compromises fertility and elevates the risk of reproductive disorders. To elucidate its spatiotemporal dynamics, we integrated single-nucleus RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics to construct a comprehensive aging atlas of 12 human ovarian tissues spanning ages 12-54 (prepubertal, age 12, n = 1; young, ages 23-29, n = 4; middle-aged, ages 32-34, n = 2; and older-aged, ages 42-54, n = 5). Our analysis revealed aging-related transcriptomic shifts,...

Despite the long interspersed nuclear element-1 (LINE1, L1) retrotransposons having been implicated in Alzheimer's disease (AD), a fundamental understanding of the AD-specific lifespan-long trajectory of L1 has been limited. Here, we characterize the content and expression of L1 covering four brain regions (hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, cerebellum, and the rest of brain tissue) of APP/PS1 mice, a murine model of AD, and their wild-type C57BL/6 littermates from 3 to 24 months of age. We report...

The objective of the study was to evaluate the relationship of plasma biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) with in vivo proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (¹H-MRS) markers, and their association with cognitive function across the early stages of the AD continuum. Determining these associations may clarify the AD-related biological pathways and support the development of integrated AD blood and ¹H-MRS biomarkers for early detection of these pathways. Fifty-five older adults (40 cognitively...

Depression is a known risk factor for dementia and MCI, but its associations with AT(N) biomarkers remain inconsistent and may differ by cognitive status. We cross-sectionally studied 2929 dementia-free participants from the Health & Aging Brain Study-Health Disparities (HABS-HD). Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) was identified as having cognitive complaints, Clinical Dementia Rating scores between 0.5 and 2.0, and at least one cognitive test ≤ 1.5 SD below norms. We defined AT (N) with plasma...

Dementia is an escalating global public health challenge, with India poised to experience one of the largest absolute increases in cases due to rapid demographic aging, lifestyle transitions, and health system constraints. This review critically examines the epidemiology, barriers to diagnosis and care, economic and social impacts, and proposes an integrated dementia care framework for India. While dementia has traditionally been viewed through a social and clinical lens, emerging evidence...

Humans can react remarkably quickly to novel or displaced visual stimuli when time is of the essence. Such movements are thought to be initiated by a subcortical fast visuomotor network, but it is unclear how this network declines with age. Past work in the upper limb has detailed delayed reaching corrections to jumped visual stimuli in aging, but the underlying mechanisms contributing to these changes of the fast visuomotor network are poorly understood. Conversely, work in the lower limb has...

This study aimed to estimate the age, period, and cohort trends of multimorbidity among Chinese older adults from 2002 to 2022, and to explore how these three trends were affected by gender and whether or not living alone. Data were extracted from the China Longitudinal Healthy Living Survey (CLHLS) (2002-2022), and a total of 52,876 valid samples aged 65 to 105 were included. We measured 15 types of chronic diseases, and participants having two or more chronic diseases were considered to have...

Aging-associated neurodegeneration underlies various neurological diseases; however, the neurocrine basis remains poorly understood. Here, we investigate the role of parathymosin (PTMS), a secretory protein with nuclear functions that has recently been identified as a circulating factor in the brain. The results show that loss of PTMS is sufficient to cause severe, age-dependent neurodegeneration and reduced lifespan, whereas hypothalamic PTMS gain of function counteracts aging-associated brain...