Aggregator

A centuries-old heart drug costing less than ten cents a day could help keep heart-failure patients out of the hospital. New research suggests low-dose digoxin can reduce heart-failure hospitalizations by about 25%, potentially paving the way for its return as a major treatment.

Exercise and healthy blood sugar levels in midlife may help slow cognitive decline decades later. Physical activity appeared especially beneficial for Mexican American adults, suggesting that some brain-protective factors may differ across populations.

Aging gradually wears down the cartilage and fluid that protect our joints, but avoiding movement may actually make matters worse. Exercise helps nourish cartilage, strengthens the muscles that protect joints, and can reduce osteoarthritis pain. Low-impact activities such as swimming, cycling, tai chi, yoga, and walking on varied terrain may also improve balance and mobility. Even a few minutes of the right kind of movement can make a difference.

The nature of aging remains debated: is it the accumulation of damage or by execution of a program? Here, we revisit this long-standing dichotomy in light of recent experimental advances, each one of us supporting one of those paradigms and being critical about the other. The damage-driven model views aging as the progressive loss of function caused by imperfect repair and modulated by factors such as rate of damage accumulation, damage resistance, biological redundancy, and tissue regeneration....

How aging of human neurons affects dynamics of essential organelle such as mitochondria and autophagosomes remains largely unknown. MicroRNA-induced directly reprogrammed neurons (miNs) derived from adult fibroblasts retain age-associated signatures of the donor, enabling the study of age-dependent features in human neurons, including longitudinal isogenic samples. Transcriptomic analysis revealed that neurons derived from elderly individuals are characterized by gene expression changes...

As we age, the body appears to sacrifice walking efficiency in exchange for stability. Older adults stiffen the ankle more with each step, which may help prevent falls but also forces the muscles to work harder while producing less forward motion. This leads to shorter strides, slower walking, and faster fatigue. Exercises targeting balance, coordination, and lower-leg strength could help preserve mobility.

COVID-19 can reactivate dormant viruses hiding in the body, including Epstein-Barr, cytomegalovirus, and several herpes viruses. One poorly understood viral family was strongly associated with long COVID and lasting disability, offering a potentially important clue to why some patients struggle to recover.

Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may be leaving a measurable imprint inside the human body. Researchers analyzing more than two decades of U.S. health data found that blood bicarbonate levels have climbed about 7% since 1999, while calcium and phosphorus have declined—changes that closely track increasing atmospheric CO2.

Gut microbes need something to eat, and when fiber is limited, they may begin consuming proteins from the mucus lining that protects the gut. Researchers found that fiber can suppress this process, while indigestible plant proteins help microbes produce more beneficial compounds.

A widely available food-preservation chemical is emerging as a disturbing factor in rising UK suicide deaths, particularly among younger people and men. Researchers say the scale may be underestimated and are calling for urgent restrictions on access and harmful online information.

Scientists have uncovered why two seemingly opposite ways of targeting the same brain receptor can both promote weight loss. In mice, activating the GIP receptor in the brainstem reduced appetite, while blocking it in the hypothalamus removed a kind of “brake” on fullness signals. The discovery helps explain why very different obesity drugs can achieve similar results and suggests that carefully combining GIP-targeting treatments with GLP-1 drugs like those related to Wegovy and Ozempic could produce stronger effects.

Ocular measures are increasingly used as non-invasive proxies of cognitive processes such as attention and listening effort. However, their interpretation in aging populations is complicated by concurrent changes in ocular physiology and oculomotor control, raising a critical question: to what extent do age-related differences in these measures reflect cognitive rather than other physiological factors? Here, we dissociate these contributions by characterizing ocular dynamics (resting and...

CONCLUSION: Higher baseline RCII is consistently associated with both greater baseline frailty and is also associated with steeper frailty trajectories in older adults. These findings suggest that RCII may serve as a valuable biomarker to identify older adults at high risk for functional decline.

INTRODUCTION: Population aging poses significant societal and health challenges, with loneliness and social isolation (L/SI) recognized as pressing public health concerns. While social isolation refers to an objective lack of social contacts, loneliness reflects the subjective perception that one's social needs are not being met. Although L/SI have been associated with an increased risk of dementia and global cognitive decline, their relationship with language functioning remains largely...

Aging is a complex biological process. The corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) signaling pathway has gained increasing attention for its potential role in regulating aging, acting as a key bridge connecting neuroendocrine stress mechanisms with both central and peripheral aging processes. As a core neuropeptide of the stress response, CRF primarily mediates downstream effects through its type 1 receptor (CRFR1), while its type 2 receptor (CRFR2) may play a modulatory, often opposing, role....

CONCLUSIONS: The flexible Choose Home model successfully fills a gap in the home and community-based care continuum by providing time-limited, high-intensity case management to rapidly stabilize multicomplex older Veterans. This sustainable, provider-led interprofessional approach offers a scalable strategy to support aging in place and reduce costly institutional care.

One of the defining phenotypes of a senescent cell is the senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP), which can propagate senescence in neighboring cells both in vitro and in vivo. Importantly, this paracrine spreading of senescence can act in a cell non-autonomous manner, influencing neighboring cell populations and contributing to immune cell recruitment. As cellular senescence has recently been linked to both age-related neurodegenerative phenotypes and local inflammation and is more...

Scientists have discovered that the aging human brain may be far less isolated from the rest of the body than once believed. Stanford researchers found that large numbers of immune cells from the blood begin entering the brain as early as middle age, where they can transform into microglia, the brain’s specialized immune cells. The finding overturns a long-standing assumption that these cells remain largely separate from the body’s immune system throughout life.

Simply choosing the stairs could have surprisingly big benefits for your heart and longevity. A large analysis involving more than 480,000 people found that regular stair climbers were 39% less likely to die from cardiovascular disease and 24% less likely to die from any cause than people who rarely took the stairs. They also had lower risks of heart attack, stroke, and heart failure.

A surprising stress-related signal may help the brain repair itself after injury. Researchers found that myelin-producing precursor cells rapidly release the stress hormone CRH near damaged brain tissue, helping control how those cells mature and rebuild protective nerve insulation. The same system also influences brain development and the thickness of myelin later in life. The findings could offer new clues about how early-life stress contributes to psychiatric disorders.