Aging & Longevity

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that excess weight may have a varying effect on cancer risk through life with its impact potentially being more pronounced in later adulthood, and that adulthood weight gain might be a better indicator of obesity-related cancer risk than BMI measured at a single point in time.

UV exposure leads to skin damage, thus inducing skin aging. The aims of this study were to explore the differences in tRNA-derived small RNAs (tsRNAs) expression in the Human dermal fibroblasts (HDF cells) photoaging cell model and to explore the biological functions of tsRNA in skin photoaging. In this study, we found that in both photoaging cell models and the skin of photoaging mice, the 5'-tiRNA-His-GTG expression levels were significantly elevated. In HDF cells, overexpression of...

The accumulation of senescent cells contributes to aging and related diseases; therefore, discovering safe senolytic agents-compounds that selectively eliminate senescent cells-is a critical priority. Heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) inhibitors (HSP90i), traditionally investigated for cancer treatment, have shown potential as senolytic agents. However, inhibitors face formulation, toxicity, and cost challenges. To overcome these limitations, we employed a virtual screening approach combining...

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight the need for tailored treatment strategies for older breast cancer patients to balance treatment efficacy with quality-of-life considerations. These findings call for a strategic reevaluation of treatment protocols and emphasize the importance of personalized care, particularly for older women, to improve outcomes without sacrificing the quality of life while maintaining maximum survival potential.

INTRODUCTION: Inadequate primary care infrastructure and training in China and misconceptions about aging lead to high mis-/under-diagnoses and serious time delays for dementia patients, imposing significant burdens on family members and medical carers.

Healthy "environment-sleep-emotion-exercise-diet" intervention [E(e)SEEDi] lifestyle can improve the quality of life, prolong aging and promote longevity due to improvement of human immunity and prevention of cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Here, the author reviewed the associations between these core elements with CVD and cardiovascular aging, and developed a new scoring system based on the healthy E(e)SEEDi lifestyle for prediction and evaluation of life expectancy. These core factors are...

Gene expression (GE) and alternative splicing (AS) contribute to the formation of new interaction networks with potentially significant cellular functions. Here, we investigate ageing in the Drosophila female germline stem cell (GSC) niche and describe functional changes in both GE and AS. The GSC niche comprises three types of support cells, whose ageing transcriptomes reveal differential GE and AS variations related to cell adhesion, cytoskeleton and neural signalling. Because each population...

Mouse oocytes undergo drastic changes in organellar composition and their activities during maturation from the germinal vesicle (GV) to metaphase II (MII) stage. After fertilization, the embryo degrades parts of the maternal components via lysosomal degradation systems, including autophagy and endocytosis, as zygotic gene expression begins during embryogenesis. Here, we demonstrate that endosomal-lysosomal organelles form large spherical assembly structures, termed endosomal-lysosomal...

Epigenetics, the study of heritable changes in gene expression that do not involve alterations to the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequence, plays a pivotal role in cellular function, development, and aging. This review explores key epigenetic mechanisms, including DNA methylation (DNAm), histone modifications, chromatin remodeling, RNA-based regulation, and long-distance chromosomal interactions. These modifications contribute to cellular differentiation and function, mediating the dynamic...

CONCLUSION: Collectively, the CT ratio exhibits adequate prognostic accuracy for low HGS, which is not significantly affected by comorbidities and functional limitations. Our findings have clinical and policy implications in timely identifying older adults at risk of developing low HGS.

CONCLUSIONS: This study proposes a novel integration of semantic and executive mechanisms underlying the observed increase in false memories during aging, with inhibition playing an unexpected role in enhancing false memory susceptibility.

Trajectories of decline from healthy aging to dementia are not linear; they may range from a more attenuated to a more accelerated cognitive worsening. This longitudinal study investigates the impact of Cognitive Reserve (CR) on task performance in a cohort of 117 individuals (mean age 74.89; SD = 7.43) who experienced difficulties in everyday life and referred to a neuropsychology unit for cognitive assessment. Only participants assessed three times were included in the study. CR was estimated...

Epigenetic clocks have emerged as novel measures of biological aging and potential predictors of mortality. We examined all-cause, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality prediction by epigenetic age acceleration (EAA) estimated using different epigenetic clocks. Among 2105 participants to the 1999-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey aged ≥ 50 years old and followed for mortality through 2019, we calculated EAAs from the residuals of nine epigenetic clocks regressed on...

Frailty indexes (FIs) capture health status in humans and model organisms. To accelerate our understanding of biological aging and carry out scalable interventional studies, high-throughput approaches are necessary. We previously introduced a machine vision-based visual frailty index (vFI) that uses mouse behavior in the open field to assess frailty using C57BL/6J (B6J) data. Aging trajectories are highly genetic and are frequently modeled in genetically diverse animals. In order to extend the...

CONCLUSION: Our study confirms enduring sex differences in memory and executive function, even among individuals aged 80 and above. Current gonadal hormone levels do not mediate these differences. While estrogen may predict executive function, its influence does not explain the sex differences. These findings underscore the complex nature of cognitive disparities between sexes in older age, warranting further investigation into underlying mechanisms.

The composition and functionality of the gut microbiota (GM) changes throughout the life course. As we move into older age, it starts to shift towards a less healthy one, which may lead to an imbalance in the GM community. Strategies that can reverse age-related dysbiosis are an important part of healthy aging. Little is known about the GM composition of older adults with different physical activity (PA) levels and whether it might contribute to healthy ageing. The aim of this study was to...

CONCLUSIONS: Inadequate fruit and vegetable consumption was associated with higher odds for injurious falls among adults aged ≥ 50 years (especially females), and this association was partly mediated by cognition, affect, and sleep/energy. Future longitudinal studies are necessary to provide more insight into the underlying mechanisms, and to assess whether increasing fruit/vegetable consumption may reduce risk for falls.

Mutations that accumulate in the human male germline with age are a major driver of genetic diversity and contribute to genetic diseases. However, aging-related male germline mutation rates have not been measured directly in germline cells (sperm) at the level of individuals. We developed a study design in which we recalled 23 sperm donors with prior banked samples to provide new sperm samples. The old and new sequential sperm samples were separated by long timespans, ranging from 10 to 33...

Hydropower, an important renewable energy source worldwide, is threatened by reservoir sedimentation. Ecological restoration (ER) can mitigate this by reducing upstream sediment, thereby extending hydropower facilities' lifespan. However, ER may also reduce runoff, potentially diminishing energy generation and complicating its overall impact on hydropower potential. Here, we examine China's Yellow River, once the world's most sediment-laden river, using eco-hydrological and reservoir regulation...

Speech comprehension in noisy environments constitutes a critical challenge in everyday life and affects people of all ages. This challenging listening situation can be alleviated using semantic context to predict upcoming words (i.e., predictability gain)-a process associated with the domain-specific semantic network. When no such context can be used, speech comprehension in challenging listening conditions relies on cognitive control functions, underpinned by domain-general networks. Most...