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A long-overlooked organ may hold surprising clues to healthy aging and cancer survival. Researchers at Mass General Brigham used AI to analyze CT scans from tens of thousands of adults and found that people with healthier thymuses—a small immune-system organ once thought to become largely irrelevant after childhood—lived longer and had substantially lower risks of heart disease, cancer, and death.

Scientists at Scripps Research have uncovered a molecular “switch” that appears to fuel the damaging brain inflammation seen in Alzheimer’s disease. They found that a protein called STING becomes chemically altered in a way that keeps the brain’s immune system stuck in overdrive, harming the connections between nerve cells.

Melanoma may not become steadily more dangerous with age as scientists once assumed. In a surprising discovery, researchers found that cancer spread was lowest in young mice, surged in middle-aged mice, and then dropped again in very old mice. The key appears to be a special type of immune cell that helps keep cancer dormant and prevents it from spreading.

Multimorbidity, the presence of two or more conditions, is associated with a higher risk of death as individuals age. However, modeling multimorbidity in laboratory animals is difficult, if not impossible, because specific conditions are seldom individually diagnosed and treated in these settings. Because of their shared environment, physiology, and genetic diversity, and because they are medically managed as individuals, companion dogs have potential to serve as a translational multimorbidity...

Current Alzheimer's disease therapies offer limited efficacy and are often accompanied by significant side effects, underscoring the urgent need for new treatment strategies. Enhancing autophagy represents a promising therapeutic approach, yet most known autophagy inducers act through the mTOR-dependent pathway, which broadly affects cellular metabolism and proliferation, and their clinical potential is further limited by poor blood-brain barrier (BBB) penetration. To address these twin...

Biological aging is a key determinant of liver disease and mortality, but there is little evidence on noninvasive index for assessment of liver biological aging. We developed the Liver Aging Index (LAI) in the China Kadoorie Biobank (CKB, N = 21,629) using Cox-Gompertz proportional hazards model. The LAI incorporated three clinical factors (body mass index, systolic and diastolic blood pressure), eight plasma biomarkers (glucose, total cholesterol, triglycerides, high- and low-density...

Losing weight may involve rewiring the gut and the brain at the same time. In a study of obese adults, an intermittent fasting-style diet led to significant weight loss, healthier metabolic markers, and notable shifts in gut bacteria. Brain scans also revealed changes in regions tied to appetite, cravings, and self-control. The results suggest the gut microbiome and brain may work together to influence weight-loss success.

A new study suggests fish oil may help reduce insulin resistance even in people who aren't obese. In diabetic rats, omega-3 supplementation improved blood sugar levels, cholesterol, and inflammation by shifting immune cells into a more anti-inflammatory mode.

Long Interspersed Element-1 (L1) causes DNA damage and inflammation, which are hallmarks of cellular senescence. To understand the role of endogenous L1 in senescence, accurate detection and measurement of L1 messenger RNA (mRNA) expression changes during this process is crucial, as L1 transcription is the prerequisite step of L1-related downstream effects. We developed an automated bioinformatics pipeline to quantify locus-level L1 mRNA expression in ex vivo and in vitro models of normal and...

This study tests the moderating role of essentialist beliefs about aging (i.e., perceptions of aging as a fixed versus malleable process) in the relationship between physical functioning and subjective well-being distinguishing between a) overall quality of life and b) health satisfaction among older adults in clinical care. We propose that essentialist beliefs serve as adaptive, palliative cognitions that help maintain high subjective well-being despite health challenges. In a sample of...

Early-life experiences can exert lasting impacts on brain function. While previous research has largely focused on early-life adversity, the long-term consequences of early-life enrichment on the aging brain remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the behavioral and molecular effects of communal nesting (CN, a model of early social enrichment, during postnatal day 2-9) in aged male mice. Behaviorally, CN-exposed mice preserved hippocampus-dependent recognition memory but...

Brain arteriolosclerosis, a primary pathology of cerebral small vessel disease, is common in older adults and is associated with lower cognitive and motor function and higher odds of dementia. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that arteriolosclerosis is associated with lower diffusion anisotropy and higher trace of the diffusion tensor in white matter, independently of other age-related neuropathologies and visible white matter hyperintensities (WMH). In-vivo diffusion MRI and...

CONCLUSION: The findings of this study suggest that resistance training adaptations exhibit high task specificity in older adults, and significant improvements in functional outcomes can be achieved with elastic bands.