The science of rejuvenation biotechnology. Advocacy for longer, healthier lives.
Fight Aging! publishes news and commentary relevant to the goal of ending all age-related disease, to be achieved by bringing the mechanisms of aging under the control of modern medicine. This weekly newsletter is sent to thousands of interested subscribers. To subscribe to the newsletter, please visit: https://www.fightaging.org/newsletter/. To unsubscribe, send email or reply to this email at…
Myesthenia gravis is a rare autoimmune condition in which a specific receptor needed for nerve impulses to pass through the neuromuscular junction to active muscle fibers is blocked or destroyed by immune activity. This leads to muscle weakness that varies over time, and can progress to be life-threatening in a minority of cases. The prognosis is good for the majority of patients, however. While…
Tauopathies emerge in the aging brain, a pathological level of phosphorylation of the tau protein that is disruptive to cell function. Evidence suggests a feedback loop between tau phosphorylation and consequent aggregation into neurofibrillary tangles on the one hand and chronic inflammation in brain tissue on the other, ultimately leading to the widespread death of neurons. Here, researchers…
Muscle tissue is metabolically active. In response to use during physical activity, muscle cells secrete a range of signals, as a class now called myokines or exerkines. These signals produce overall beneficial effects on cell behavior and tissue function throughout the body. The precise details of this process are still under investigation, and only the major signals are fairly well mapped - a…
In order to produce an airtight answer to the question of whether obesity accelerates aging, versus merely being very bad for one's health, one has to have an airtight definition of aging. It is always possible to fall back to the oldest and least useful definition of aging, which is a rise in risk of mortality over time driven by intrinsic causes. Arguably the effects of obesity fit that…
A sizable body of evidence points to a meaningful role for the accumulation of senescent cells in the onset and development of age-related pulmonary conditions such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. These are conditions characterized by chronic inflammation and harmful structural remodeling in lung tissue. Animal studies suggest that senolytic therapies to clear senescent cells can turn back the…
There are now scores of aging clocks in the literature, most of which have come and gone and see little adoption. Most research is focused on gathering more data for handful of mainstream clocks, but these clocks are intended to capture a measure of aging generally across the whole body, keyed to outcomes such as mortality risk. Evidence suggests that different organs and tissues can age at…
The major divide in theories of aging lies between the mainstream camp of damage accumulation and antagonistic pleiotropy on the one hand, and the minority camp of programmed aging theories on the other. The damage accumulation camp sees aging as a side-effect of the focus of evolutionary mechanisms on early life reproductive success, favoring the development of biological systems that are…
Iron metabolism is strongly connected to oxidative stress, the excessive production of reactive oxygen species and other oxidative molecules that outpaces the ability of cells to avoid, resist, or repair the consequent damage. It can lead to a form of programmed cell death called ferroptosis. Here, researchers describe how iron metabolism and ferroptosis are seen to contribute to the development…
That we cannot accurately and robustly measure biological age is a major impediment to the development of rejuvenation therapies. Without the ability to quickly focus on approaches with the largest effects on biological age, the field spends far too much time on marginal classes of therapy, and optimization of any given approach is challenging, haphazard, and slow. The development of aging clocks…
Alzheimer's disease, and the other common age-related neurodegenerative conditions, are characterized by chronic inflammation in brain tissue. Aging in general is characterized by an increased level of constant inflammatory signaling. Numerous different mechanisms contribute to this constant inflammation, such as maladaptive reactions to mitochondrial DNA fragments released into the cytoplasm as a…