Aging & Longevity

Aging impacts immune function, but the mechanisms driving age-related changes in immune cell subsets remain unclear. To explore age-dependent changes in immune cell populations, we analyzed human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from a cohort of healthy donors aged 20-82 years using a 36-color spectral flow cytometry panel focused on T cells. We identified a unique population of memory CD8 T cells, which lack CXCR3 and produce a Th2-like cytokine response, and accumulate with age. We...

Aging is the primary risk factor for numerous chronic diseases, making the identification of safe and effective anti-aging strategies a critical focus in biomedical research. Heterochronic parabiosis by blood exchange shows that the exchange interaction between young and old plasma can exert anti-aging effects through exchange of bloodborne factors. However, the limited plasma source greatly affects clinical translation. Here, we demonstrate that periodic therapeutic phlebotomy in...

Epigenetic alterations are an important shared hallmark of ageing and cancer. The development of epigenetic markers of ageing using blood DNA methylation data has been an active area of research. These markers have been used to assess disease risk, with potential to shed light on the complex link between ageing and cancer. We comprehensively summarised the literature on the most widely used and recently developed epigenetic markers of ageing, and synthesised the findings from studies that...

CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that ADS may function as a complement to-rather than a substitute for-informal care and is associated with reduced institutionalization risk. Optimizing ADS delivery to match caregiving capacity may further enhance effectiveness.

The meninges, long viewed as passive protective membranes, are now recognized as active immunological interfaces harboring diverse immune populations. Among them, B cells have emerged as dynamic participants in central nervous system (CNS) homeostasis and disorders. Recent studies have identified distinct B cell subsets in the meninges at different developmental and activation stages, including precursors supported by skull marrow-derived progenitors and immunoglobulin A (IgA)⁺ plasma cells...

The immune system could play an important role in the age-related decline in brain function, yet specific immune-based strategies to enhance brain resilience in older individuals are lacking. Here, we combined engineered proteins and direct brain delivery to target immune cell populations within the old brain. We detected T cells with an exhaustion signature in the old brain and targeted them with a potent engineered checkpoint inhibitor (RIPR-PD1). This led to T cell expansion and strong...

The nasal microbiome has emerged as a previously underrecognized modulator of neuroinflammation and central nervous system (CNS) homeostasis. Beyond its role in respiratory host defense, this microbial niche is anatomically positioned to directly influence brain physiology through olfactory neuronal pathways, systemic immune signaling, and inter-organ communication within the gut-lung-brain axis. Accumulating evidence indicates that nasal microbiome dysbiosis contributes to blood-brain barrier...

CONCLUSION: This study indicates that educational attainment, frequency of physical activity, oral health status, and metabolic factors are associated with temporal variation in the risk of cognitive impairment among older adults. Focusing on these modifiable factors may inform feasible, actionable screening and prevention strategies in primary care and community settings. Our findings also underscore the importance of dynamic monitoring of these indicators and suggest their potential value in...

CONCLUSIONS: Recommendations to improve dementia care planning and post-diagnostic support for South Asian communities include (1) Reframing narratives around dementia and help-seeking through culturally-tailored community interventions; (2) Culturally competent, person- and family-centred care; (3) Holistic and integrated support beyond clinical care; (4) Equitable partnership working with South Asian communities to co-produce dementia services.

CONCLUSIONS: In older adults, EDS is independently associated with overt dehydration. Routine assessment of daytime sleepiness may serve as a simple, non-invasive marker to identify individuals potentially at risk, enabling timely hydration interventions and potentially improving health outcomes in aging populations.

Frailty is a geriatric syndrome characterized by reduced physiological reserves and increased vulnerability to stressors. Given its complex phenotypes and underlying biology, robust multidimensional biomarkers are needed to advance personalized care. We aimed to identify serum metabolomics signatures associated with frailty phenotypes and related features. We analyzed serum metabolomics data in 901 participants (47.5% males, mean age 68.3 ± 3.5 years) from the Berlin Aging Study II, classified...

Cancer presents a remarkably instructive perturbation of mechanisms manifesting in our biology that have gone awry, eliciting a malady that is inexorably increasing in incidence and societal burden concomitant with healthier aging. The wealth of knowledge and data forthcoming from decades of cancer research can be organized into conceptually distinct but interconnected parametric dimensions that define the mechanistic foundation of the disease: aberrantly acquired functional capabilities (the...

Fanconi anaemia (FA) is a DNA-repair disorder that compresses multiple hallmarks of ageing into childhood and early adulthood. Persistent genomic instability in FA precipitates oxidative stress, inflammatory remodelling, and metabolic reprogramming, which together erode epigenetic integrity and immune competence. Here we provide evidence FA-specific DNA-repair failure is linked to mitochondrial metabolism, nutrient-sensing networks, and immune dysfunction. In this context, we discuss how these...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an age-related progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaque deposition, neurofibrillary tangles of hyperphosphorylated tau protein, chronic neuroinflammation, and dysregulation of multiple regulated cell death pathways. Aging, as the primary risk factor for AD, is accompanied by the accumulation of oxidative stress, which serves as a pivotal contributor to AD pathogenesis and is intricately linked to the activation of diverse cell...

Ageing is associated with a dysregulated immune system that contributes to vulnerability in older adults to infection, malignancies, autoimmune diseases, and inflammatory disorders. This immune dysfunction can be categorised into two processes: progressive decline in immune responsiveness (immunosenescence) and chronic low-grade systemic inflammation (inflammaging). These processes perpetuate a cycle wherein persistent inflammation accelerates immune cell exhaustion and senescence, while...

Biological age, an indicator of an individual's health status, was initially measured using bulk tissue aging clocks. However, by averaging molecular signals across thousands of cells, these tools mask the cellular heterogeneity that characterizes aging. Recent single-cell aging clocks, enabled by high-resolution omics technologies, address this limitation. In this review, we provide a systematic overview of these tools, covering their computational foundations and the key biological insights...

CONCLUSION: These findings demonstrate that short-term consumption of ultraprocessed HFD selectively impairs consolidation while sparing retrieval of hippocampal- and amygdala-dependent memory in aging. These findings are important because identifying the specific memory processes that are disrupted, rather than global memory dysfunction, helps narrow mechanistic targets and informs the development of more precise interventions to mitigate diet-related cognitive decline in aging.

Although hypoxia is a well-known key driver of metabolic reprogramming in endometrial cancer (EC), its role in lactate-mediated macrophage activation remains unclear. This study investigates whether hypoxia-mediated lactate metabolism reprogramming facilitated EC progression via macrophages. Our data demonstrated that hypoxia-inducible factor 1 subunit alpha (HIF1A) drives a lactate-regulated metabolic cascade, elevating glycolytic genes and monocarboxylate transporter 3 (MCT3) in EC cells to...

Little is known about tissue-specific changes that occur with aging in humans. Using the description of 33 million histological samples we extract thousands of age- and mortality-associated features from text narratives that we call The Human Pathome (pathoage.com). Notably, we can broadly determine when post-development aging starts at the organism and tissue level, indicating a sexual dimorphism with females aging earlier but slower and males aging later but faster. We employ unsupervised...

No abstract