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A surprising new study suggests that eating peanuts every day could help support brain health and memory in older adults. Researchers found that consuming about two servings of unsalted, skin-roasted peanuts daily for 16 weeks improved insulin responsiveness in brain regions important for memory, a function that often weakens with age and has been linked to Alzheimer's disease.

A UCLA study found that long-term exposure to a common pesticide was linked to more than 2.5 times the risk of Parkinson's disease. Scientists also uncovered how the chemical damages brain cells and identified a promising way to protect them.

A massive study of nearly 486,000 adults found that regularly drinking tea was associated with an 11% lower risk of heart and blood vessel diseases. The lowest risk was linked to drinking roughly six to eight cups per day, with black tea showing more consistent benefits than green tea.

Ageing-associated inflammation ("inflammaging") is characterised by chronic microglial priming or overactivity that elevates neurodegeneration risk. Microglia also accumulate autofluorescent lipofuscin as they age-aggregates of oxidised lipids, misfolded proteins and metals that generate reactive oxygen species. Characterising age-related changes in brain autofluorescence could provide insight into brain ageing dynamics and could identify associations with potential biomarkers in accessible...

Efforts to extend longevity and healthspan have benefited from the use of in vitro systems, short-lived model organisms and computational approaches, but translation to humans depends on demonstrating efficacy and safety in mammalian in vivo models. However, rigorously controlled rodent lifespan studies are slow, costly and low-throughput. Hormesis, the induction of adaptive stress response pathways by low-level toxic or metabolic challenges, provides a mechanistic means for improved resilience,...

Biological aging drives cellular dysfunction and human disease, yet studying human aging dynamics remains challenging due to limited experimental platforms. Here we show that long-term post-mitotic culture of human fibroblasts recapitulates and accelerates features of in vivo aging. Longitudinal paired transcriptomic and epigenetic analyses of four female fibroblast lines revealed that in vitro aging reflects key signatures of in vivo primary fibroblast aging. Direct neuronal conversion of in...

Scientists at the University of Virginia have developed a promising new strategy to fight glioblastoma, one of the deadliest and most difficult-to-treat forms of brain cancer. Their experimental approach combines focused ultrasound, tiny nanoparticles, and genetic molecules called microRNAs to attack multiple cancer-driving genes simultaneously.

Scientists have uncovered a hidden mechanism that allows high-cholesterol diets to undermine the body's natural cholesterol defenses, and blocking it dramatically lowered harmful LDL cholesterol in mice. Even more promising, an experimental drug targeting this pathway has already passed an early human safety trial, potentially speeding the development of a new treatment for high cholesterol.

Scientists at Johns Hopkins have uncovered a crucial missing link between a common gut bacterium and colorectal cancer, solving a mystery that has puzzled researchers for nearly two decades. The bacterium, Bacteroides fragilis, produces a toxin that damages the colon’s protective lining, triggers chronic inflammation, and promotes tumor formation.

Scientists have discovered a bizarre bacterial defense system that works almost completely backward from anything seen before. Unlike typical bacterial immune systems that keep a deadly toxin under control until a virus attacks, this unusual mechanism waits until an infection begins before producing the DNA that switches on its lethal weapon. The infected bacterium then destroys itself, preventing the virus from multiplying and spreading to neighboring cells.

Gene transcription by RNA Polymerase II (Pol II) is highly vulnerable to transcription-blocking DNA lesions (TBLs), which, if unresolved, induce transcription stress leading to cellular decline and aging. TBLs are removed by transcription-coupled nucleotide excision repair (TC-NER). TC-NER is initiated when Cockayne syndrome group B protein recognizes lesion-stalled Pol II and promotes TC-NER complex assembly. This complex recruits TFIIH for lesion verification, followed by incision and repair...

As they age, older adults are increasingly susceptible to health decline associated with excessive alcohol consumption, which can accelerate biological aging through cellular stress, senescence-associated responses, and inflammaging. Although sesaminol, a sesame-derived lignan, protects against alcohol-induced colitis in young animals, its effects on alcohol-associated intestinal dysfunction and senescence-related changes in middle-aged animals remain unclear. In this study, middle-aged mice (50...

Circadian biology is recognized for its importance to physiology and metabolism, with implications for healthy aging and disease risk. To test whether altering the number of imposed environmental cycles experienced per unit chronological time affects health biomarkers and lifespan, we compressed and expanded the photic cycle (T-cycle, combined light:dark length) by ~ 10% relative to the 24-h day. Male C57BL/6 J mice (n = 60 per group, 12 weeks old) were randomized to one of three T-cycles: T ~...

Aging is a universal biological process signified by a time-dependent decline in physiological activity, driven by molecular and cellular damage, leading to greater susceptibility to diseases and fatal outcomes. Impaired proteostasis is a key aspect of cellular aging in which the cells become less efficient at folding, repairing, and recycling proteins, consequently inducing accumulation of damaged and aggregation-prone proteins. The onset of muscle loss is driven by a reduction in protein...

Quantifying biological aging and predicting age-related functional decline are increasingly important for reducing the health and socioeconomic burden of population aging. DNA methylation is one of the most extensively studied epigenetic features of aging and underlies epigenetic clocks, promising quantitative biomarkers of biological age. However, the molecular processes driving age-associated DNA methylation changes and the biological signals captured by these clocks remain unclear. A major...

Radiotherapy combined with immunotherapy has emerged as a promising therapeutic strategy across multiple cancer types. However, despite encouraging findings from selected clinical trials, most radioimmunotherapy studies have shown only limited or even negative results, highlighting important biological barriers that limit therapeutic efficacy. Accumulating evidence suggests that radiotherapy induces phenotypic and functional changes in immune cells that resemble key features of age-related...

Bone marrow macrophages (BMMs) coordinate skeletal remodelling, haematopoietic niche function, immune surveillance, and tissue repair. Whether a persistent senescent state in BMMs is a causal driver of skeletal ageing, however, remains unresolved. The central challenge is both definitional and causal: macrophages may be quiescent, terminally differentiated, chronically activated, tolerant, or metabolically dysfunctional, whereas commonly used senescence markers-including p16^(INK4a), p21^(CIP1),...

DNA-protein crosslinks (DPCs) are one of the most complex and deleterious forms of DNA damage. DPCs arise from the stabilization of covalent enzyme-DNA intermediates, such as topoisomerase cleavage complexes, or from exposure to bifunctional crosslinking agents, and they differ in protein identity, DNA context and chemical linkage. Because of their bulky nature, DPCs obstruct essential chromatin processes such as DNA replication and transcription, making their timely removal by dedicated DPC...

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