Aging & Longevity

Over 20% of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) worldwide are Chinese, although the efficacy of existing blood-based measures of AD biomarkers is largely unknown in Asian cohorts. Here we explored how plasma tau biomarkers correlated with cross-sectional and longitudinal AD-related outcomes and their diagnostic performance in 1,085 participants from three independent studies, including two Chinese cohorts, Greater-Bay-Area Healthy Aging Brain Study (n = 425) and Huashan (n = 297), and the...

Age-related changes in circulating metabolites influence systemic physiology and may contribute to diseases such as sarcopenia. Although metabolic dysregulation is closely linked to sarcopenia, the roles of specific metabolites remain unclear. In this study, we performed comprehensive plasma metabolomic and lipidomic analyses across two cohorts comprising 1,013 individuals, uncovering the metabolic characteristics of sarcopenia, including a notable decline in plasma sarcosine levels in both...

The increasing global population aging has made the prevention and control of aging-related diseases a major public health challenge in the twenty-first century. Nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), as a precursor of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD^(+)), has garnered significant attention in recent years for its anti-aging potential. This review comprehensively reviews the metabolic pathways and molecular mechanisms of NMN, comparing the technical characteristics and industrialization...

Adipose tissue, a pivotal player in whole-body energy homeostasis and insulin sensitivity, undergoes considerable remodelling throughout the ageing process, a facet that has garnered little attention until the past decade. This Review comprehensively summarizes the dynamic metabolic, cellular and functional changes that occur in white and thermogenic adipose tissue during distinct ageing stages, across different adipose tissue depots. We emphasize the influence of ageing on different cell types...

The accumulation of senescent cells (SEN) with aging produces a chronic inflammatory state that accelerates age-related diseases. Eliminating SEN has been shown to delay, prevent, and in some cases reverse aging in animal disease models and extend lifespan. There is thus an unmet clinical need to identify and target SEN while sparing healthy cells. Here, we show that Lysosomal-Associated Membrane Protein 1 (LAMP1) is a membrane-specific biomarker of cellular senescence. We have validated...

Sarcopenia and osteoporosis are common, interconnected conditions, in aging populations that lead to increased frailty, disability and a heightened risk of falls and fractures. Sarcopenia is the progressive loss of muscle mass, strength and function, that often coexists with osteoporosis, which is characterized by reduced bone strenght for a decreased bone mineral density (BMD) and altered bone quality. Together, these conditions form a clinical syndrome known as osteosarcopenia. Both disorders...

CONCLUSIONS: Overweight, class 1, and class 2 obesity using BMI criteria were protective against TALS. Further study is needed to elucidate the underlying reasons for this protective effect against TALS.

We validated AnthropoAge, a biological age (BA) metric, for prediction of mortality and age-related outcomes using harmonized data from the US, England, Mexico, Costa Rica, and China. We estimated AnthropoAge and AnthropoAgeAccel as proxies of BA and age acceleration using body mass index and waist-to-height ratio. We compared mortality prediction of AnthropoAge vs. chronological age (CA) using Cox models and assessed its association with age-related outcomes with generalized estimating...

Heart failure (HF) is a major global and life-threatening disease. Despite advances in therapies, the prevalence of HF is increasing owing to an ageing population and the pervasive pandemic of obesity and metabolic disorders, which have transformed the pathophysiology of HF. Changes in cardiac energy metabolism and the related energy deficit crucially contribute to the severity and type of HF. Furthermore, perturbations in excitation-contraction coupling, mitochondrial function and oxidative...

The number of patients with heart failure is expected to rise sharply owing to ageing populations, poor dietary habits, unhealthy lifestyles and improved survival rates from conditions such as hypertension and myocardial infarction. Heart failure is classified into two main types: heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). These forms fundamentally differ, especially in how metabolism is regulated, but they also have shared...

Advances in biomarkers and pathophysiology of vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia (VCID) are expected to bring greater mechanistic insights, more targeted treatments, and potentially disease-modifying therapies. The 2025 Annual Workshop of the Albert Research Institute for White Matter and Cognition, sponsored by the Leo and Anne Albert Charitable Trust since 2015, focused on novel biomarkers for VCID. The meeting highlighted the complexity of dementia, emphasizing that...

Influenza A virus (IAV) infection causes acute and long-term lung damage. Here, we used immunostaining, genetic, and pharmacological approaches to determine whether IAV-induced cellular senescence causes prolonged alterations in lungs. Mice infected with a sublethal dose of H1N1p2009 exhibited cellular senescence, as evidenced by increased pulmonary expression of p16, p21, β-galactosidase and the DNA damage marker gamma-H2A.X. Cellular senescence began 4 days post-infection (dpi) in the...

Tobacco use is the main source of indoor air pollution and contains a variety of toxic components. The smoke from burning cigarettes is a key environmental risk factor that leads to accelerated aging and the occurrence of numerous diseases. Meanwhile, cigarette smoke and aging are both prominent risk factors for age-related macular degeneration (AMD). This study demonstrates that long-term exposure to cigarette smoke can impair retinal function and induce the aging of retinal pigment epithelium...

Cochlear aging causes substantial hearing impairment in older adults, yet primate-specific mechanisms remain poorly characterized. Our comprehensive analysis combining single-cell and histopathological profiling in aging Macaca fascicularis demonstrates progressive cochlear degeneration featuring accelerated sensory hair cell loss, senescent spiral ganglion neurons with elevated neuroinflammation, and marked stria vascularis atrophy. We discovered that downregulation of transmembrane transport...

Excessive exposure of the skin to UV radiaton (UVR) accelerates the aging process and leads to a photoaging state which involves similar pathological alterations to those occurring in chronological aging. UVR exposure, containing both UVA and UVB radiation, triggers cellular senescence and a chronic inflammatory state in skin. UVR promotes oxidative stress and a leakage of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) from nuclei and mitochondria into the cytoplasm of keratinocytes and fibroblasts. It is...

Previous studies have shown that dietary selenium (Se) deficiency in mice reshapes gut microbiota, exacerbates healthspan deterioration (e.g., type 2 diabetes), and paradoxically activates beneficial longevity pathways. This study demonstrated that dietary Se deficiency accelerated many age-related gut microbial changes in aged telomere-humanized C57BL/6J diabetic mice in a sexually dimorphic manner, with Akkermansia muciniphila showing the greatest enrichment in males. However, dietary Se...

T stem cell-like memory cells (TSCM cells) are considered to be essential for the maintenance of immune memory. The TSCM population has been shown to have the key properties of a stem cell population: multipotency, self-renewal and clonal longevity. Here we show that no single population has all these stem cell properties, instead the properties are distributed. We show that the human TSCM population consists of two distinct cell subpopulations which can be distinguished by the level of their...

Cellular senescence is an aging-related mechanism characterized by cell cycle arrest, macromolecular alterations, and a senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). Recent preclinical trials established that senolytic drugs, which target survival mechanisms of senescent cells, can effectively intervene in age-related pathologies. In contrast, senomorphic agents inhibiting SASP expression while preserving the survival of senescent cells have received relatively less attention, with potential...

Age is a significant risk factor for functional decline and disease of the musculoskeletal system, yet few biomarkers exist to facilitate ageing research in musculoskeletal tissues. Multivariate models based on DNA methylation, termed epigenetic clocks, have shown promise as markers of biological age. However, the accuracy of existing epigenetic clocks in musculoskeletal tissues are no more, and often less accurate than a randomly sampled baseline model. We developed a highly accurate epigenetic...

OBJECTIVES: Self-relevant stimuli, such as one’s name or face, are prioritised by the brain, leading to faster responses and enhanced attentional processes. The psychophysiological underpinnings of those mechanisms are related to early and late event-related potential (ERP) components, particularly to reduced N2 and enhanced late positive potential (LPP). However, most up-to-date research on the self has focused on groups of young adults while older groups were rarely recruited for such...