Aging & Longevity News and Discussions

[raklian]

[caltrek]

Time Change for Biological Aging Clocks: How Immune Cells Shape Our Body's True Age
January 8, 2024

Introduction:

(Eurekalert) LEBANON, NH—When asked, “How old are you?” Most people measure by how many birthdays they’ve had. But scientists have developed epigenetic clocks to measure how 'old' your body really is. At the forefront of aging research, these clocks go beyond our calendar age to try and reveal our biological age—a true marker of how healthy we are. However, scientists don't fully understand how they work. As a recent NYT article pointed out, it's a bit like having a sophisticated gadget without a manual. Our bodies' internal workings, especially our immune system, play a huge role, but the details are still unclear.

New research by Dartmouth Cancer Center scientists has taken the first step to change that. The team, led by Ze Zhang, PhD, Lucas Salas, MD, MPH, PhD, and Brock Christensen, PhD, is diving deep into the immune system to learn how different immune cells affect epigenetic clocks* (see also definition of epigenetic below), to make them more accurate and reliable.

In their study, “Deciphering the role of immune cell composition in epigenetic age acceleration: Insights from cell-type deconvolution applied to human blood epigenetic clocks,” newly published in Aging Cell, the team determined how our body's biological age is related to our immune system. Using novel tools they recently developed for immune profiling, they were able to more closely examine how immune cell profiles relate with biological age estimates from epigenetic clocks. In particular, the balance between naïve and memory immune cells seems to accelerate or slow down biological aging. Key innovations of the study include:

• Enabling the calculation of Intrinsic Epigenetic Age Acceleration (IEAA) with unprecedented immune cell granularity, allowing for a much more detailed understanding of the aging process at a cellular level.

• Offering a more direct comparison between immune cells and aging than the traditional Extrinsic Epigenetic Age Acceleration (EEAA) method, which only considers a limited range of immune cells.

• Adding a new layer of understanding to the biological interpretation of epigenetic clocks, by mapping out how various immune cell subsets contribute to epigenetic aging and providing insights that previous research has missed.

Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1030582

*caltrek’s comment: I had forgotten the definition of “epigenetics.” It is “the study of changes in gene activity that occur without altering the underlying DNA sequence. It's like a layer of instructions that sits on top of your genetic code and influence how genes are turned on or off.”

[raklian]

[caltrek]

Eating More of This Type of Protein Could Help You Age Better
Miriam Fauzia
January 17, 2024

Introduction:

(Inverse) We’ve got two weeks left of Veganuary — the month-long challenge to temporarily give up meat and meat products — and if you haven’t started yet, there’s no better time than the present. Your future self’s healthy body will most definitely thank you, or so says science.

According to a study published Wednesday in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers at Tufts and Harvard University found eating a diet heavy on plant-based proteins and light on animal ones contributed to healthy aging, particularly among those assigned female at birth. This finding was based on data analyzed from the Nurses’ Health Study, a prospective cohort study of over 120,000 registered nurses whose lifestyle and health data were collected since 1976.

“Consuming protein in midlife was linked to promoting good health in older adulthood,” Andres Ardisson Korat, the study’s lead author and a research scientist at Tufts University’s Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging, said in a press release. “We also found that the source of protein matters. Getting the majority of your protein from plant sources at midlife, plus a small amount of animal protein, seems to be conducive to good health and good survival to older ages.”

MORE PLANTS EQUALS BETTER HEALTH

There’s been a lot of hype — not unwarranted — behind plant-based diets. Studies upon studies find that eating more fruits, veggies, whole grains, nuts, and seeds can slash one’s risk for and even reverse the damage wrought by chronic maladies like heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, obesity, and certain types of cancer.

The new study adds to this growing body of research but specifically investigates how dietary protein from plants may relate to healthy aging, which, as the researchers write in their paper, hasn’t been explored nearly as much.

Read more here: https://www.inverse.com/health/age-hea ... utrition

[wjfox]

At 93, he’s as fit as a 40-year-old. His body offers lessons on aging.

The human body maintains the ability to adapt to exercise at any age, showing that it’s never too late to start a fitness program

January 16, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EST

For lessons on how to age well, we could do worse than turn to Richard Morgan.

At 93, the Irishman is a four-time world champion in indoor rowing, with the aerobic engine of a healthy 30- or 40-year-old and the body-fat percentage of a whippet. He’s also the subject of a new case study, published last month in the Journal of Applied Physiology, that looked at his training, diet and physiology.

Its results suggest that, in many ways, he’s an exemplar of fit, healthy aging — a nonagenarian with the heart, muscles and lungs of someone less than half his age. But in other ways, he’s ordinary: a onetime baker and battery maker with creaky knees who didn’t take up regular exercise until he was in his 70s and who still trains mostly in his backyard shed.

Even though his fitness routine began later in life, he has now rowed the equivalent of almost 10 times around the globe and has won four world championships. So what, the researchers wondered, did his late-life exercise do for his aging body?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness ... rd-morgan/



Credit: Row2k.com

[weatheriscool]

Reprogrammed T cells make mice (and maybe us) age slower
By Paul McClure
January 24, 2024

https://newatlas.com/medical/reprogramm ... s-in-mice/
Researchers have used reprogrammed CAR T cells, usually used as a cancer treatment, to target the senescent cells that contribute to aging and later-life diseases. After one treatment, old mice showed improved metabolism and exercise tolerance, while young ones aged slower and were protected from age-related diseases like obesity and diabetes for life.

T cells fulfill crucial roles in the body’s immune system. They can act as ‘killer’ cells, attacking cells infected with a virus or other pathogen, or as ‘helper’ cells, supporting B cells in producing antibodies. They can also be engineered to fight cancer. In CAR T-cell therapy, a patient’s own T cells are modified in the lab to produce surface proteins called chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) that recognize and bind to specific antigens on the surface of cancer cells, which they then destroy.

In a new study, researchers from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), New York, discovered that these CAR T cells can be reprogrammed to target senescent cells, thought to be involved in aging and many of the diseases encountered in later life.

[raklian]

Read this thread by David Sinclair as he explains the implications from a different study.

[erowind]

Something I’ve thought about is that simply removing senescent cells won’t be enough. It will probably double or even triple our lifespans but eventually all the cells in our bodies will become dysfunctional and removal won’t work anymore. We have to actually rejuvenate cell division proper too. Does anyone know if there are any teams working on this?

[raklian]

Something I’ve thought about is that simply removing senescent cells won’t be enough. It will probably double or even triple our lifespans but eventually all the cells in our bodies will become dysfunctional and removal won’t work anymore. We have to actually rejuvenate cell division proper too. Does anyone know if there are any teams working on this?

Have you seen the living Rejuvenation Roadmap by Lifespan.io? The link is provided below. It gets regular updates regarding the status of the most promising rejuvenation therapies and technologies in development. As for your area of concern, I would look under the Stem Cell Exhaustion umbrella or "hallmark of aging," or perhaps Epigenetic Alteration, Telomere Attrition, or even Genomic Instability.

https://www.lifespan.io/road-maps/the-r ... n-roadmap/

[weatheriscool]

1,000 American dogs required for life extension drug trial
By Paul McClure
February 04, 2024

An 11-year-old Whippet called Boo is the first dog enrolled in a study to trial a drug designed to extend the healthy lifespan of senior dogs of almost all sizes. On the back of excitement generated by the drug’s predecessor, which was made for large-breed dogs, the researchers are calling on owners of older dogs across the US to enroll in the study.

Big dogs like Great Danes and Newfoundlands may only live seven to eight years, compared with the average lifespan of little ones like Chihuahuas and Miniature Poodles, who can live up to 20 years. Selectively breeding large- and giant-breed dogs has led to them having levels of IGF-1, a hormone that drives cell growth and is part of the longevity pathway in animals and humans, up to 28 times higher than that of small dogs. Administered by vets every three-to-six months, LOY-001 inhibits IGF-1 overexpression and extends a large dog’s healthy lifespan.

https://newatlas.com/pets/life-extendin ... ticipants/

[raklian]

[firestar464]

Man the dude himself noticed us

[wjfox]

[Tadasuke]

Researchers tracked data on students in grades 9 through 12 from 1991 through to 2021. They report a 16-fold decline in daily cigarette use (16.33x to be exact) — from 9.8% of teens saying they smoked daily in 1991 to 0.6% by 2021.

"Occasional" (at least 1 cigarette over the past month) smoking dropped from 27% of teens to 3.8% by 2021, a sevenfold decline (7.1x to be exact). That's a very significant drop in 30 years, but the question is, whether they replaced smoking with vaping and what will be long term effect of vaping. There are now significantly more vape stores than there were in 2014.

Even though reductions in smoking among young people is certainly a welcome news, it may take time to show up in improved life spans. For lung and other cancers, reductions do not even begin to emerge for years after quitting, and even after 10 years, remain midway between the continuing smoker and lifelong nonsmoker.

source article: https://www.healthday.com/health-news/c ... ly-smokers

[raklian]

Pretty interesting.

[weatheriscool]

Diet Control of Isoleucine Increases Healthspan and Lifespan By Up to 33% in Mice
March 23, 2024 by Brian Wang
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2024/03/d ... -mice.html

Low-protein diets promote health and longevity in diverse species. Restriction of the branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) leucine, isoleucine, and valine recapitulates many of these benefits in young C57BL/6J mice. Restriction of dietary isoleucine (IleR) is sufficient to promote metabolic health and is required for many benefits of a low-protein diet in C57BL/6J males. Here, we test the hypothesis that IleR will promote healthy aging in genetically heterogeneous adult UM-HET3 mice. We find that IleR improves metabolic health in young and old HET3 mice, promoting leanness and glycemic control in both sexes, and reprograms hepatic metabolism in a sex-specific manner. IleR reduces frailty and extends the lifespan of male and female mice, but to a greater degree in males. Our results demonstrate that IleR increases healthspan and longevity in genetically diverse mice and suggests that IleR, or pharmaceuticals that mimic this effect, may have potential as a geroprotective intervention.

• Isoleucine restriction (IleR) improves metabolic health in both sexes
• IleR reprograms hepatic metabolism in a sex- and age-dependent manner
• IleR reduces frailty and increases lifespan, with stronger effects on male lifespan
• Amino acid restriction begun at 6 months extends healthspan but not lifespan

[raklian]

Article in question - https://www.lifespan.io/news/restoring- ... 7cd5e6d17c

[wjfox]

I hope he is right.

But at the same time, I will be devastated to lose my parents (both aged 75).

[Tadasuke]

I've been believing in LEV since the year 2000, I came up with this concept independently, then heard about it in TV and then read about it, what made me feel validated in some way. Other people however have been ridiculing me simply for rarely mentioning the possibility of radical life extension (not everyone though, some people like it). It has affected me. I used to think, that ordinary people would be much more open to radical longevity and transhumanism, as for me, these were the obvious choices for all humanity. Seems like people are gradually, slowly opening up to this though. I've been persuading some people to donate to the Methuselah Foundation and to the SENS Foundation with unfortunately no avail.

Trendlines made by large institutions are often wrong. For example, trendlines for photovoltaics or electric mobility. I saw "official" trendlines for PVs, EVs and orbital rocket launches putting current prices or prevalence 30 extra years into the future. Truly pessimistic. I also know that some people in the West think that life expectancy for example in India is 20 years lower than it really is. Or that life expectancy in my country is 8 years lower than it really is. Or that only 50% of people in the world have access to electricity, when in reality it's 90% (maybe possibly even 91% in 2024). Tony Seba's predictions are closer to reality than the pessimists predictions.

People are almost always wrong about the future. Very rarely there is an accurate prediction.

[erowind]

I really hope we live to see LEV and that it comes soon enough for our parents even. Spiritually I have come to terms with death to an extent, but that doesn't mean it has to happen now when it could happen in a million years instead. The result is still the same and there'd be nothing wrong with that.

But it feels so profoundly wrong for someone to die when they themselves don't want to die. My cat passed over the winter and something I'll never forget is how much she didn't want to die. She would try to eat and drink and her body wouldn't let her. We did help her pass on once she couldn't walk for nearly a day, she was almost 21. But her desire was so clearly strong, she would struggle to move and all she wanted was to keep being with us and look at us even in her final moments. It really broke my heart, I love her so much.

She deserved life, and she wanted more life to share and the circumstances of the universe took her life from her. Her death wasn't some stoic resignation, it was a struggle to keep going until the very end, something I don't even know I'd be capable of.