Aging & Longevity

RNA is subject to many modifications, from small chemical changes like methylation to conjugation of biomolecules such as glycans. As well as endogenously written modifications, RNA is also exposed to damage induced by its environment. Certain clinical compounds are known to covalently modify RNA with a growing appreciation of how these impact clinical efficacy. To understand the regulation of these modifications, we need a reliable, sensitive, and rapid methodology for their quantification....

Purpose of the ResearchUsing longitudinal data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we examined whether childhood book environment is associated with higher cognitive functioning and better cognitive maintenance later in life, especially among individuals with lower education.Major FindingsAmong 86,619 adults aged 60+ (226,515 person-wave observations from Waves 4-8, with retrospective childhood circumstances from Waves 3 and 7), even modest childhood access to...

Adverse events across the life course have been linked to older biological ageing profiles. Whether these associations differ between males and females, and whether such differences depend on adversity occurring in childhood, adulthood or both periods, remains unclear. In 153,557 UK Biobank participants aged 40-69 years, we assessed associations of childhood and/or adulthood adversity with metabolomic ageing, frailty, telomere length and grip strength. Sex differences were evaluated using...

Cereal grains contain bioactive compounds that may influence longevity. We investigated the effects of 20 cereal varieties on longevity and healthspan in Drosophila melanogaster, including triticale, bread wheat, durum wheats, ancient wheats, and regional varieties. Cereal-based diets exhibited sex-specific differences relative to cereal-free controls: females showed 3-13% longer lifespans while males exhibited reduced lifespans by up to 19%. In females, clear patterns were observed: pronounced...

Fat plays a key role in maintaining energy balance and supporting various physiological processes. HuAge-related disorders in fat utilization are increasingly prevalent, contributing to impaired energy balance, heightened metabolic disease risk, and increased cardiovascular dysfunction. The mechanism of age-induced disorders of fat utilization remains unclear. This study aims to explore the key factor affecting fat digestion and absorption during aging. Mice of different ages were used to...

Skeletal muscle aging is characterized by progressive functional decline and molecular remodeling, yet how different muscle types respond to aging remains incompletely understood. Here, we performed integrated transcriptomic and metabolomic profiling of three functionally distinct muscles-gastrocnemius (GA), soleus (SOL), and tibialis anterior (TA)-from young (3-month) and aged (24-month) C57BL/6J male mice. Our multi-omics approach revealed both shared and muscle-specific molecular signatures...

The changing demography of human populations has motivated a search for interventions that promote healthy ageing, and especially for evolutionarily-conserved mechanisms that can be studied in lab systems to generate hypotheses about function in humans. Reduced Insulin/IGF signalling (IIS) is a leading example, which can extend healthy lifespan in a range of animals, but whether benefits and costs of reduced IIS vary genetically within species is under-studied. This information is critical for...

Alzheimer's disease (AD) represents a continuously advancing neurodegenerative condition distinguished by the unremitting deterioration of cognitive abilities and memory impairment, which significantly hampers daily functioning of life. In the absence of disease modifying treatments, it continues to pose a significant global challenge. Though symptomatic treatment exists, the inherent complexity involved with AD pathogenesis related to Aβ plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, neuroinflammation,...

Immune checkpoints such as cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4), programmed cell death 1 (PD-1), and programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) have been targeted in cancer therapy, however, the efficacy of these interventions remains limited. Beyond its immune function on T cell surfaces, CTLA-4 is also expressed in various intrinsic cancer cells, where it influences cell proliferation, metastasis, and apoptosis. The present study aimed to investigate the function of CTLA-4 in...

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Frailty, a hallmark of systemic vulnerability in aging populations, is increasingly recognized in the clinical management of chronic respiratory diseases (CRDs). Molecular mechanism underpinning the relationships remain insufficiently elucidated. This study hence aimed to investigate whether proteomic biomarkers-circulating plasma proteins reflecting systemic inflammation, metabolism, and tissue remodeling-are associated with CRDs and may serve as potential mediators of the observed links. We...

Our ability to sense the position and movement of our limbs is essential for all activities of daily living. This ability arises from the signal sent by muscle spindles to the brain. While there is clear evidence for age-related changes in the quantity of muscle spindles and in their sensitivity, behavioral assessment of age-related changes in position sense have produced mixed findings even though it is taken as textbook knowledge that proprioception declines with age. Yet, study results are...

CONCLUSION: Among community-dwelling older adults, the composite IC score demonstrated a significant independent association with an elevated risk of hip fracture. Regular monitoring of individual IC scores may serve as an early warning indicator to initiate preventive interventions.

In their recent study, Zhang et al. (Aging Clin Exp Res, 2025) report an association between a composite unhealthy lifestyle score and the risk of comorbid type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and arthritis in the CHARLS cohort. While the topic is of significant public health relevance, we have identified several substantive methodological and interpretative limitations that temper the conclusions. Chief among these are the oversimplified and unvalidated definition of lifestyle exposures,...

CONCLUSIONS: Hospitalization due to COVID-19 was associated with poorer multidimensional aging outcomes, whereas vaccination appeared protective against functional decline. These findings highlight the importance of preventive strategies and sustained vaccination coverage to preserve functionality and promote healthy aging in post-pandemic populations.

CONCLUSIONS: Specific muscle synergy patterns are associated with balance recovery and stability maintenance. Fractionation and merging of muscle synergies triggered in response to perturbations may relate to functional decline in older adults, serving as a mechanism for remodeling to adapt to changes in limb biomechanics and multiple motor task commands.

Dimensionality reduction is routinely applied to single-cell transcriptomic data to improve interpretability, remove noise and redundancy, and enable visualization. Most existing methods aim at preserving the most prominent data properties, which can lead to omission of rare but important signals. Here we propose a novel framework, SAKURA, that uses knowledge-derived genes of interest to guide dimensionality reduction, which can help cluster rare cells and separate highly similar cell...

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The global rise in life expectancy is accompanied by an increase in the prevalence of mental health conditions among older adults, including mild cognitive impairment (MCI), dementia, delirium, depression, anxiety, and other severe mental illness. These conditions significantly impact independence, increase healthcare costs, and increase mortality risk. Mounting evidence underscores the central role of modifiable lifestyle factors-particularly physical activity and diet-in the prevention and...

CONCLUSIONS: Changes in loneliness were associated with an increased risk of subsequent CMM in both China and South Korea, with the strongest associations observed among individuals experiencing persistent loneliness. These findings indicate that loneliness is a dynamic and potentially modifiable risk factor for cardiometabolic multimorbidity across different sociocultural contexts. Early identification and targeted interventions addressing loneliness may contribute to the prevention of CMM...