Advances in Gerontology最新文献

Human aging is associated with an increased risk of various geriatric syndromes, cognitive impairment being among the most frequent. The most prominent form of the cognitive impairment—dementia—has become one of the major course of dependency in older and oldest old patients. Nevertheless, it has been shown that despite the fact that various parts of the brain change structurally over time due to natural aging or diseases, it does not necessarily manifest into clinical symptoms for some older people. Therefore, there is a dissociation of the severity of morphological and functional brain changes. The review presents current data on adaptive mechanisms that ensure the preservation of neurocognitive activity during aging process. In addition to the concept of brain and cognitive reserves, it discusses different mechanisms of neurocognitive maintenance and compensation both in the norm and in the development of Alzheimer’s disease. The possibility of their clinical and instrumental assessment and practical significance are discussed.

The process of aging is a complex biological phenomenon that is influenced by multiple factors, including genetics, environment, and lifestyle. Recent studies have shown that epigenetic modifications play an important role in the aging process, as they regulate gene expression and ultimately affect cellular function. Epigenetic modifications include DNA methylation, histone modification, and non-coding RNA expression, among others. The authors of the review discuss the role of DNA methylation in regulating gene expression and its relationship to age-related diseases such as cancer and neurodegeneration. Also, the role of histone modification and its impact on chromatin structure and gene expression is reviewed in the article. Additionally, review provides information on the involvement of molecular hallmarks of aging in age-related diseases. Understanding the role of epigenetic mechanisms in aging is crucial for developing new interventions that could potentially slow down or even reverse the aging process.

Brain aging is part of the aging of the whole body, largely determining the success of general aging and the quality of life of an older person. Brain aging is a complex multifactorial process that occurs throughout a human’s life, which includes changes at subcellular, tissue, and organ levels as well as at physiological level, mediating changes in neurophysiological (cognitive) functions. The review provides up-to-date data on morphological and physiological changes observed during natural aging; it discusses various phenotypes of brain aging, including both pathologically accelerated and “supernormal” aging; questions of the division between the norm and pathology are raised in the context of changes observed during brain aging; the factors both accelerating and decelerating the aging processes of the brain are considered along with linkage of natural aging with neurodegenerative and cerebrovascular diseases.

Studying the mechanisms of aging is one of the most important goals of modern science. A significant amount of data on the processes associated with a decrease in the functional ability to regenerate, cell proliferation and resistance to adverse factors with age has been accumulated due to fundamental research. The aim of the review was to study the mechanism of drugs with the senolytic activity, to determine the main targets of their effect at the cellular level, and also to evaluate the prospects for their clinical use. The relevance of this topic is confirmed by the increasing number of clinical trials of senolytics, many of which have ambiguous results and require further analysis and elimination of revealed difficulties and shortcomings. We reviewed the literature on Pubmed and Scopus platforms over the past 10 years in order to find information about the mechanisms of senotherapy and the possibility of using senolytics in clinical medicine. The focus was on those senolytic drugs that were used in clinical studies.

Numerous studies have shown that mitochondria-targeted antioxidant SkQ1 can increase the lifespan of many species and suppress the development of various age-related diseases. Previously we demonstrated that SkQ1 suppresses all manifestations of accelerated senescence in OXYS rats, including the development of the main signs of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). GABA and glutamate are two of the most abundant neurotransmitters in the central nervous system, and it was showed that changes in their signaling accompany aging and the development of AD. Previously, we showed delicate age-related changes of the components of glutamate/GABA system in Wistar and OXYS rats, a unique model of AD. Here we investigated the influence of the treatment with SkQ1 from 12 through 18 months of age (that is, during the active progression of AD-like pathology) on glutamate/GABA system in the rat hippocampus. Our data demonstrated that the neuroprotective effects of long-term administration of SkQ1 are mediated by its effect on the GABAergic but not the glutamatergic system in the hippocampus of Wistar and OXYS rats. Western blotting revealed an increase in the level of glutamate decarboxylase GAD67 in rats of both strains, a decrease in the GABA transporter GAT1 in Wistar rats, and a tendency towards abrogation of the increased level of GABA receptor subunits GABAAr1 in OXYS rats. Thus, we showed that the neuroprotective effects of long-term treatment with SkQ1 are mediated by its effect on the GABAergic but not the glutamatergic system in the hippocampus of Wistar and OXYS rats.

Editor-in-Chief of Advances in Gerontology describes the current editorial policy and the strategy of future development of the renewed journal which since 2023 is published as a separate independent edition. It is emphasized that now priority is given to publications devoted to (1) the fundamental mechanisms which may determine the increase in the probability of death of living organisms, including humans, with age, and to (2) identifying various factors of both chemical and physical nature that could potentially help to slow down the aging process. In addition, papers included in Volume 13, Issue 1 are shortly reviewed.

The study is aimed at determining age-related changes in ocular tissues of crab-eating macaque (Macaca fascicularis). To this end, we measured the concentrations of a total of 71 major metabolites in aqueous humor, vitreous humor, and lens of two groups of animals, young (4-year-old, n = 6) and aged (21-year-old and 27-year-old, n = 2) macaques. Significant age-related changes were revealed for all three tissues. In the lens, the most significant changes were found for cytoprotective compounds – antioxidants, osmolytes, and molecular ultraviolet (UV) filters: the concentrations of these metabolites in the lenses of aged animals are much lower. The observed changes contribute to increased oxidative stress and predispose the lens to the development of cataracts. The majority of cytoprotective metabolites are synthetized in the lens epithelium. Findings of this work indicate that the observed age-related changes may be caused by the impairment of the lens epithelial cells leading to the increase of oxidative stress in the lens nucleus and developing of age-related cataracts.

Genotoxic and cytotoxic drugs, widely used in anticancer therapy, target proliferating cells and induce cell death through a variety of cell cycle-dependent mechanisms. The mechanisms of the delayed toxicity induced by chemotherapy are not fully understood. The accumulation of senescent cells may underlie some of the mechanisms for the development of late adverse effects of chemotherapy on muscle tissue. Cellular models are necessary for the development of therapeutic approaches to these side effects. In our study we used human immortalized myoblast MB135 to optimize the protocol for obtaining the senescent phenotype of muscle cells under the influence of chemotherapeutic drugs such as doxorubicin, cisplatin and arsenic trioxide (As₂O₃). We evaluated the dynamics of changes in senescence proteins pRb, p21 and p53 and SASP-associated proteins such as TNF, IL-1b, IL-6, IL-8, CXCL2, GDF15 using Western blot, RT-PCR and ELISA. Cell senescence was confirmed by the measurement of cell senescence index by flow cytometry after 7 days of exposure to chemotherapeutic agents. The obtained results indicate that all three investigated chemotherapeutic compounds induce the appearance of senescence markers, but the dynamics of these changes are somewhat different for them, which may reflect differences in the mechanisms of senescence phenotype induction.

The research of aging, rejuvenation and life extension has been notoriously characterized by a multitude of often contradictory approaches, both in terms of theoretical concepts as well as possible practical interventions. This work will explore a general taxonomy of these approaches that seems to be ubiquitous in the history of aging and longevity research. The taxonomy will juxtapose between reductionist/therapeutic and holistic/hygienic approaches to potential rejuvenating and life-extending interventions. Both approaches sought to achieve biological equilibrium and constancy of internal environment, yet emphasized diverging means and diverging perceptions of what constitutes equilibrium and constancy. The reductionist approach saw the human body as a machine in need of repair and internal adjustment and equilibration, seeking to achieve material homeostasis by eliminating damaging agents and introducing biological replacements, in other words, working by subtraction and addition toward balance. The holistic approach, in contrast, focused on the equilibration of the organism as a unit within the environment, strongly emphasizing the direct sustaining and revitalizing power of the mind and hygienic regulation of behavior. In the holistic approach, internal equilibrium was sought not so much through calibrating intrusions, but through resistance to intrusions. The apparent relative weight of each approach in academic and public discourse will be shown to change with time, in several western countries, with a special focus on France, Austria and Germany, in the first half of the 20th century. This work (the first part in a sequence of two) will demonstrate the initial fascination with reductionist rejuvenation and life extension attempts, in this time and area, that were encouraging, yet eventually came short of the original promise.

The relationships between blood biomarkers, frailty, and the risk of death of people diagnosed with COVID-19 is unclear. In the current investigation we decided to analyze the collective effect of multiple biomarkers (laboratory markers of inflammation, blood biochemistry deviations, comorbidity, demographics) on mortality in people diagnosed with COVID-19. We analyzed baseline data of one hundred fifty-five patients (age range from twenty-six to ninety-four) diagnosed with COVID-19. Thirty-seven parameters (including major morbidities) were used to derive the frailty index (FI) and calculate the risk of death as a function of FI and individual biomarkers. Discriminative ability was assessed by the area under the receiver-operating characteristic (ROC curves). The mean frailty index was 0.17 (SD = 0.10), FI of those who survived was 0.11 (SD = 0.078) and those who died was 0.22 (SD = 0.093). In a sex-adjusted model, the FI was a more powerful predictor for mortality than age. The ROC analysis showed that models involving FI as a feature have good discriminative ability for predicting COVID-19 mortality: AUC for age was 0.77, for the FI it was 0.82, and for the fully adjusted model (age + FI) it was 0.84. Thus, the systemic effect of multiple biological processes comprising aging are elucidated using the Frailty Index approach. Assessment of the frailty index at the time of admission of a patient with COVID-19 to the clinic can help to predict the high risks of severe disease and mortality.