Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Atherosclerosis Atherosclerosis is the growth of fatty lesions in blood vessel walls, ultimately leading to a heart attack or stroke when an unstable lesion ruptures. Atherosclerosis is primarily a condition of macrophage dysfunction, in which these cells fail to keep up with their task of removing excess cholesterol from blood vessel walls in order to return it to to the bloodstream for transport back to the liver. The local excess of cholesterol is largely the proximate cause of this macrophage dysfunction, so as the amount of cholesterol grows, macrophages become ever less capable of dealing with it. They die, adding their mass to the lesion, while signaling for reinforcements that will suffer the same fate. That said, this is a description of how atherosclerosis progresses once […]
https://www.fightaging.org/arc....hives/2024/05/mitoch

Characterizing Age-Related Changes in Sweat Gland Biochemistry The progressive dysfunction of sweat glands in the skin is probably not high on the list of items that people think about in the context of degenerative aging, at least not until they experience it. A reduced capacity of sweat glands leads to heat intolerance, and it is one of the contributing causes of the raised mortality rate among the elderly in heat waves. Here, researchers examine some of the biochemistry of sweat gland cells in aging mice. They focus in on a number of proteins that may turn out to be viable targets for drugs to force sweat glands in aged skin back to a more youthful degree of function. It is a long road from fundamental investigations of this sort to that outcome, […]
https://www.fightaging.org/arc....hives/2024/05/charac

A Programmed Aging View of Epigenetic Clock Challenges The author of this paper is an advocate for programmed aging. This is the view that degenerative aging is actively selected by evolutionary processes, perhaps because it helps to reduce the risk of runaway population growth, or perhaps because aging species better adapt to ecological change, rather than being a side-effect of selection effects focused on early life reproductive success that tend to produce systems that accumulate damage to fail over time. In some programmed aging views, epigenetic change is close to being the root cause of aging, being the implementation of an evolutionarily selected program. It is interesting to see an outline of perceived challenges in epigenetic clock development from the programmed aging viewpoint, to contrast with the challenges seen by other researchers, which […]
https://www.fightaging.org/arc....hives/2024/05/a-prog

The Future of Vaccination in the Old Must Involve Reversal of Immunosenescence Robust modern forms of vaccination that were developed in the 20th century remain one of the most important forms of medical technology. Infectious diseases are not going away any time soon, and continue to cause a sizable fraction of human mortality, even though that fraction is much reduced in our era. Unfortunately, effective vaccination depends on an effective immune system, and thus vaccines tend to perform increasingly poorly with advancing age. As we age our immune system becomes ever less capable, a decline into immunosenescence caused by a range of contributing processes: involution of the thymus, where T cells of the adaptive immune system mature; a growing presence of senescent, exhausted, and malfunctioning immune cells; a shift in cell populations of the bone marrow to […]
https://www.fightaging.org/arc....hives/2024/05/the-fu

Improved Autophagy Slows Age-Related Muscle Loss in Mice Improved autophagy is implicated in many of the approaches shown to slow aging in animal models. An open question is whether more targeted approaches to altering the regulation of autophagy in aged cells can improve matters to a greater degree than, for example, exercise or the practice of calorie restriction, both of which are known to produce general improvements in autophagy. Researchers here show that improvement of autophagy via increased expression of TRP53INP2 in old mice can reduce the age-related loss muscle mass and function that leads to sarcopenia. It seems an interesting target for further development of therapies. Sarcopenia is a major contributor to disability in older adults, and thus, it is key to elucidate the mechanisms underlying its development. Increasing evidence suggests that […]
https://www.fightaging.org/arc....hives/2024/05/improv