Aging & Longevity

CONCLUSIONS: Loneliness and social isolation among community-dwelling older adults are complex issues with profound implications for physical, mental, and social well-being. Addressing these challenges requires integrative approaches that consider individual, relational, and contextual factors. Further longitudinal and standardized research is needed to improve our understanding of the long-term impacts and effectiveness of interventions to mitigate these issues.

CONCLUSIONS: This study utilized a relatively large and highly representative sample of community-dwelling residents to identify factors associated with fractures in independent older adults. Even in independent older adults who were not certified as requiring long-term care, fractures were significantly associated with a decline in multiple health domains. These findings provide valuable insights that can inform efforts to promote healthy aging and reduce care dependency.

Social factors influence health outcomes and life expectancy. Individuals living in poverty often have adverse health outcomes related to chronic inflammation that affect the cardiovascular, renal, and pulmonary systems. Negative psychosocial experiences are associated with transcriptional changes in genes associated with complex traits. However, the underlying molecular mechanisms by which poverty increases the risk of disease and health disparities are still not fully understood. To bridge the...

Identifying factors affecting lifespan, including genes or proteins, enables effective interventions. We prioritized potential drug targets and provided insights into biological pathways for healthy longevity by integrating Mendelian randomization, cohort, and experimental studies. We identified causal effects of tissue-specific genetic transcripts and serum protein levels on three longevity outcomes: the parental lifespan, the top 1% and 10% extreme longevity, utilizing Mendelian randomization...

CONCLUSION: Social participation not only directly improves cognitive function but also indirectly enhances it by reducing depression and increasing grandchild caregiving engagement among middle-aged and elderly individuals. However, while the mediating effect of grandchild care is statistically significant, its effect size remains relatively small, suggesting that its overall contribution to cognitive function should be interpreted with caution. In contrast, depression demonstrates a more...

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Age-related cognitive decline associations with human electroencephalography (EEG) have previously focused on periodic activity. However, EEG primarily consists of non-oscillatory aperiodic activity, characterised with an exponent and offset value. In a secondary analysis of a cohort of 111 healthy participants aged 17 - 71 years, we examined the associations of the aperiodic exponent and offset in resting EEG with a battery of cognitive tests consisting of the Colour-Word Interference Test,...

With the unprecedented pace of global population aging, there has been a parallel epidemiological shift marked by increasing incidence rates of ulcerative colitis (UC) in geriatric populations, imposing a substantial disease burden on healthcare systems globally. The etiopathogenesis of UC in the elderly remains poorly delineated, while current therapeutic strategies require further optimization to accommodate the unique pathophysiological characteristics of elderly patients. This review...

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Increasing evidence suggests that red and processed meat consumption may elevate the risk of colorectal cancer (CRC), yet the magnitude and consistency of this association remain debated. This meta-analysis aims to quantify the relationship between red and processed meat intake and the risk of CRC, colon cancer, and rectal cancer using the most comprehensive set of prospective studies to date. We conducted a comprehensive search in PubMed, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, Embase, and Google...

Aging and COVID- 19 are known to influence DNA methylation, potentially affecting the rate of aging and the risk of disease. The physiological functions of 54 volunteers-including maximal oxygen uptake (VO₂ max), grip strength, and vertical jump-were assessed just before the COVID- 19 pandemic and again 3 years later. Of these volunteers, 27 had contracted COVID- 19. Eight epigenetic clocks were used to assess the rate of aging during the 3-year period: DNAmAge showed accelerated aging, and five...

The clinical and pathological outcomes differ between early-onset (diagnosed in men ≤55 years of age) and late-onset prostate cancer, potentially attributed to the changes in hormone levels and immune activities associated with aging. Exploring the heterogeneity therein holds potential for developing age-specific precision interventions. Here, through single-cell and spatial transcriptomic analyses of prostate cancer tissues, we identified that an androgen response-related transcriptional...

Three-dimensional (3D) genome organization becomes altered during development, aging and disease, but the factors regulating chromatin topology are incompletely understood and currently no technology can efficiently screen for new regulators of multi-scale chromatin organization. Here, we developed an image-based high-content screening platform (Perturb-tracing) that combines pooled CRISPR screens, a cellular barcode readout method (BARC-FISH) and chromatin tracing. We performed a...

The Atg8-family proteins, including LC3B (microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3 beta), are pivotal for key steps in the autophagy process. Proper regulation of LC3B homeostasis is essential for its function. Although LC3B is modulated by various posttranslational modifications (PTMs), the impact of these modifications on LC3B protein homeostasis remains unclear. Neddylation, a recently identified ubiquitin-like modification, plays diverse biological roles. Here, we identify LC3B as a...

Genetic effects on complex traits may depend on context, such as age, sex, environmental exposures, or social settings. However, it remains often unclear if the extent of context dependency, or gene-by-environment interaction (GxE), merits more involved models than the additive model typically used to analyze data from genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Here, we suggest considering the utility of GxE models in GWAS as a trade-off between bias and variance parameters. In particular, we...

The present paper provides the first integrated assessment of the capacity of the flavonol, fisetin, to induce hormetic dose responses. Fisetin was shown to induce hormetic dose responses in cellular and in vivo animal model systems affecting a broad range of endpoints of potential therapeutic and public health significance across the entire lifespan. Fisetin was effective in slowing aging processes, acting as a senolytic agent in multiple organ systems, in an hormetic fashion. In addition,...

Spermidine is a naturally occurring polyamine present in all cells and is necessary for viability in eukaryotic cells. The cellular levels of spermidine decline as an organism ages, and its supplementation has been found to extend lifespan in yeast, worms, flies, mice, and human cultured cells. The lifespan extending effect of spermidine is thought to be due to its ability to induce autophagy, a turnover of cellular components. Mitochondrial dysfunction is believed to be a major driver of the...

Chaperone-mediated autophagy (CMA) is a selective autophagic pathway that targets specific proteins for lysosomal degradation, playing a crucial role in maintaining cellular homeostasis. Recent research has highlighted the involvement of CMA in aging and age-related diseases, yet its regulation remains complex. The study by Khawaja et al. provides novel insights into the sex-specific and cell-type-specific regulation of CMA during aging. This commentary discusses the key findings of this study,...

ObjectiveWe compared pain prevalence and intensity between caregivers and non-caregivers, as well as between different types of caregivers.MethodUsing two rounds of data from the National Social Life, Health, and Aging Project, we used regression models to analyze differences in pain prevalence and intensity between caregivers and non-caregivers at baseline (2010-2011) and follow-up (2015-2016). The sample consisted of 2332 participants aged 62 and older (352 caregivers and 1980...