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A new study probes consciousness with models that simulate and classify brain activity. A neuroscientist behind the work explains its ambitions

Frailty is an established benchmark of aging-related decline, yet most measures of frailty focus on physical decline. Increasing evidence that social environments influence trajectories of aging has led to growing interest in social frailty. Recently, a 10-item Social Frailty Index (SFI-10) was developed using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) that used 8 social items plus chronological age and sex to predict mortality. This study evaluates the validity of the SFI-10, providing...

Interorgan communication is essential for metabolic homeostasis and healthy aging, with adipose tissue acting as a central hub that coordinates systemic metabolism, stress responses, and longevity. Here, we show that the miRNA-processing enzyme Dicer-1 (Dcr-1) acts in the fat body (FB) to regulate Dilp2 secretion from brain insulin-producing cells (IPCs), thereby modulating systemic insulin signaling and lifespan in Drosophila. Dcr-1 expression is reduced in multiple long-lived conditions, and...

Aging is a major contributor to the escalating prevalence of heart failure (HF). Ferroptosis has been implicated in age-related disorders and cardiovascular diseases. The role of ferroptosis in age-related HF remains unclear. Here, we show that aged rats exhibit impaired cardiac function accompanied by hallmark features of ferroptosis, including reduced glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4) expression and excessive lipid peroxidation. Consistently, cardiomyocyte-specific GPX4 knockout mice develop...

Cancer is associated with biological aging and functional decline; however, few studies have simultaneously examined objective changes in physical function and biological aging in older adults who develop cancer. We therefore compared functional and accelerated aging in generally healthy adults with and without incident invasive cancer, using data from DO-HEALTH, a three-year, randomized controlled trial including 2152 participants (mean age: 74.9 years, 61.1% women), free of major health...

Frailty is a modifiable aging-related condition driven by chronic inflammation and metabolic dysregulation, which are influenced by diet. Metabolomic profiling captures individual metabolic responses and can uncover mechanisms linking diet to frailty. This study examined the effects of food-derived metabolites on changes in frailty risk, both directly and through inflammatory pathways. This longitudinal study included baseline and three-year follow-up data from 9992 participants aged 45-85 years...

Older age combined with chronic disease increases the risk of malnutrition and frailty, impacting disease recovery and overall clinical outcomes. Serum concentrations of several trace elements and their respective biomarkers have not yet been investigated with regard to frailty in older adults with disease, although these patients most likely have an altered trace element profile owing to both inflammatory conditions and inadequate dietary intake. This cross-sectional study investigated trace...

Haematopoiesis has long been a paradigm for understanding how human genetic variation can influence physiology in health and disease, ranging from the genetic characterization of Mendelian blood diseases to population-scale genomic studies of blood cell phenotypes and diseases. More recently, advances in single-cell genomics and variant-to-function mapping are enabling mechanistic insights into how genetic variation shapes blood cell development. Alongside inherited variation, the...

How minute pathogenic signals trigger decisive immune responses is a fundamental question in biology. Classical signaling often relies on ATP-driven enzymatic cascades, but innate immunity frequently employs death fold domain (DFD) self-assembly. The energetic basis of this assembly is unknown. Here, we show that specific DFDs function as energy reservoirs through metastable supersaturation. Characterizing all 109 human DFDs, we identified sequence-encoded nucleation barriers specifically in the...

Age-related cellular changes negatively impact CD4^(+) T cell function. Our prior work showed that mitochondrial complex II (succinate dehydrogenase [SDH]) expression was upregulated in T cells from older (O) adults (60-80 years old). T cells from older adults also produced higher amounts of cytokines generally considered proinflammatory, such as Th17 cytokines IL-17A/F and IL-21, and the Th-17-supportive cytokine IL-6, compared to T cells from younger (Y) adults (25-40 years old). The objective...