Aging & Longevity

ObjectiveMany older adults stop seeing a doctor despite having insurance and significant health needs. This study asks whether psychological distress predicts disengagement from care, beyond structural barriers.MethodUsing three waves of the Health and Retirement Study (N = 5,184 adults 65+), we model whether distress in one wave predicts no medical contact in the next, testing whether wealth weakens this link.ResultsOlder adults with more psychological distress were significantly more likely to...

Macroautophagy/autophagy is a conserved eukaryotic intracellular degradation pathway, with specialized forms such as the biosynthetic cytoplasm-to-vacuole targeting (Cvt) pathway in yeast, which selectively delivers several resident hydrolase precursors to the vacuole rather than for turnover. Although the core autophagy machinery is highly conserved between yeast and plants, whether autophagy plays a biosynthetic role in transporting vacuolar hydrolases in plants has remained unclear. Here, we...

Adipose tissue (AT) is now recognised as a dynamic immunometabolic organ in which coordinated interactions between adipocytes, stromal cells, vascular elements, and resident immune populations are essential for maintaining metabolic homeostasis and endocrine function. Beyond its classical role in energy storage, AT actively regulates local and systemic immune responses through the production of adipokines, cytokines, chemokines, and lipid mediators. Among adipose-resident immune cells, B...

Aging can be experimentally induced in Hydra oligactis, making it an exception among the "immortal" cnidarian genus Hydra. In response to cold temperatures, H. oligactis polyps switch from asexual to "emergency" sexual reproduction and eventually age and die. We used GC-MS-based metabolite profiling to characterize cold-induced (CI) metabolic reprogramming during concurrent sexual differentiation and aging in H. oligactis. Metabolites in four clusters either decreased or increased progressively...

Immunosenescence increases susceptibility to infection and reduces vaccine responsiveness, yet bulk transcriptomic clocks obscure the cellular heterogeneity underlying this process. Here, we present IDEAL-Age, an interpretable deep learning framework that operates directly on single-cell PBMC transcriptomes. Benchmarking against 35 methods across independent cohorts demonstrates superior predictive performance. The framework's interpretability uncovers linear and non-linear gene contribution...

Mitis group streptococci are opportunistic pathogens residing in the oral cavity, where they produce hydrogen peroxide (H(2)O(2)), a key virulence factor contributing to their pathogenesis. We previously demonstrated that these bacteria kill the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans through H(2)O(2) production. Metformin, a widely used biguanide drug for managing blood glucose levels, has shown promising effects on aging by extending lifespan in worms and mice, and has also demonstrated potential...

Aging is accompanied by progressive epigenetic alterations, including changes in DNA methylation affecting both gene-associated regions and repetitive elements such as LINE-1 retrotransposons. Reduced epigenetic repression of transposable elements has been implicated in age-related genomic instability. Circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) provides a minimally invasive substrate for monitoring systemic molecular changes; however, age-related LINE-1 methylation dynamics in cfDNA remain poorly...

Cellular senescence is closely associated with mitochondrial dysfunction. Sirtuin 2 (Sirt2), a member of the Sirtuin deacetylases family, plays a pivotal role in regulating energy metabolism and aging in mammals. However, its function in social insect aging remains unclear. Here, using the Eastern honey bee (Apis cerana) as a model, we demonstrate that the age-related downregulation of A. cerana Sirt2 (AcSirt2) in brain tissue is coupled with progressive mitochondrial damage, reactive oxygen...

The thymus is the central organ where T cells differentiate and proliferate. T cells experience the TCR recombination to generate diversity, self-antigen tolerance, and immune response. However, the spatial heterogeneity of transcriptomics and immune repertoire of the thymus during aging haven't been studied. We constructed the thymus's spatial transcriptomics and spatial immune repertoire atlas by TCR-specific amplification. The integrated multi-omics analysis of the scRNA-seq, ST-seq,...

The gut mycobiome plays an essential role in human health, yet its influence on the progression of arterial stiffness, a key feature of vascular aging, remains obscure. In this study, we aimed to investigate the involvement of intestinal fungi in the exacerbation of arterial stiffness. In total, 763 participants were invited for the brachial-ankle pulse wave velocity test to determine their status of arterial stiffness. The gut mycobiome was identified through internal transcribed spacer...

CONCLUSIONS: Female sex and physical activity were associated with lower physiological dysregulation, whereas higher BMI was associated with greater dysregulation. These findings underscore the importance of sex differences and modifiable lifestyle factors, particularly physical activity and adiposity in multisystem physiological burden among older US adults.

Age is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, yet the molecular mechanisms underlying human cardiac aging are not fully understood. Using bulk RNA sequencing data from the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project, we identified cardiac age-associated genes by intersecting transcripts significantly correlated with age in both the atrial appendage and left ventricle, while excluding those similarly altered in skeletal muscle. Among these, 131 genes were positively correlated with age,...

Satellite cells (SCs) are essential for skeletal muscle regeneration, but their function declines with aging, often associated with increased pro-apoptotic signaling. This study investigated the impact of in vitro serum starvation-as a model of acute microenvironmental and nutrient stress-on the apoptosis and differentiation potential of human SCs from young and aged donors. SCs were isolated from the Vastus Lateralis of young and aged subjects and cultured in serum-free medium for up to 72 h....

We examined whether a genome-wide polygenic lifespan score (PLS) is associated with all-cause mortality and how this association compares with associations between long-term lifestyle factors and mortality. The PLS was computed for the older Finnish Twin Cohort (mean age 57.4 years; 45.2% men; N = 5575). Cox regression was used to estimate the effects of the PLS on all-cause mortality risk, before and after adding sex, physical activity, BMI, alcohol consumption, smoking behavior, and education...

Genotype-first screening compares patient genomes to a standard reference. The GRCh38 linear assembly contains reference minor alleles (RMAs), posing a critical structural vulnerability for automated clinical variant classification. To determine whether RMAs systematically generate false-positive annotations, we conducted an observational case series of 20 healthy adults undergoing preventive genome sequencing. Automated bioinformatic processing was performed using the GRCh38 linear reference to...

Falls in older adults are a significant public health concern. Action simulation interventions involving action observation and/or motor imagery have been proposed as alternative or adjunct strategies to physical exercise for reducing fall risk. These approaches may minimize barriers to physical practice and may specifically target deficits in motor planning that are linked to falls. The purpose of this scoping review is to examine how action simulation interventions have been applied and...

CONCLUSIONS: SIRT3 deficiency promotes age-related vascular impairment potentially by mediating EndMT and mitochondrial dysfunction, Thus, SIRT3 represents a potential therapeutic target for delaying vascular aging and associated cardiovascular diseases.

Mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (mtROS) have been implicated in aging and disease for decades and are typically viewed as a unitary, non-specific oxidative burden on cells and tissues. However, recent studies have identified at least eleven individual sources of mitochondrial ROS (ISOMRs) and revealed that ISOMRs have distinct, dynamic, and often reversible roles in diverse physiological and pathological processes, including neurodegenerative diseases, immune and metabolic dysregulation,...

Cellular senescence is a central driver of organismal ageing and related pathologies, primarily promoting chronic inflammation and tissue dysfunction through the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP). Unlike senolytics, which aim to eliminate senescent cells, senomorphic agents offer a complementary therapeutic strategy by modulating the SASP without clearing the cells, thereby preserving their potential physiological functions. This review systematically elucidates the multi-target...

Endometriosis (EMs) is characterized by chronic pelvic inflammation, but the etiology of this inflammation remains poorly understood. The senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP), whereby senescent cells secrete pro-inflammatory cytokines, is a potential mechanism. This study investigates the pro-inflammatory SASP in EMs and its underlying influences. Through molecular assays and single-cell RNA-seq analysis, we found a subgroup of endometrial stromal cells (ESCs) marked by SASP in both...