Posts tagged ageing
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
Pill for healthy ageing ‘available within a generation’
Dame Linda Partridge, a geneticist at University College London, claimed drugs will soon be available which can lower the risk of diseases like cancer and dementia by tackling the root cause – age itself.
Rather than promising immortality, taking the drugs from middle age or earlier could dramatically shorten the period of illness and frailty that we typically experience before we die.
Speaking at the EMBO life sciences meeting in Nice, France this week Dame Linda said several existing drugs have already been shown to have unexpected and welcome side effects, such as aspirin which reduces the risk of cancer.
Other therapies will be produced that mimic the effects of a severely restricted diet, which animal studies suggest can protect against a host of age-related conditions including heart disease and diabetes, she said.
Speaking after her keynote lecture, she told The Daily Telegraph: “One obvious approach in trying to deal with the very rapidly increasing incidence of age related diseases is to tackle the underlying aging process itself, because it is the major risk factor.
Surgeons at UC Davis Medical Center have successfully implanted a new telescope implant in the eye of a patient with end-stage age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the most advanced form of the disease and a leading cause of blindness in older Americans.
The device, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2010, is the only medical/surgical option available that restores a portion of vision lost to the disease. UC Davis Health System’s Eye Center, in collaboration with the Society for the Blind, is one of the few in California and the nation to offer the innovative procedure.
A condition believed to be a normal part of the ageing process has been found to have a negative effect on the brain function of older adults.
Leukoaraiosis, also known as small vessel ischemia, is a condition in which diseased blood vessels lead to small areas of damage in the white matter of the brain. The lesions are common in the brains of people over the age of 60, although the amount of disease varies among individuals.
"We know that aging is a risk factor for leukoaraiosis, and we suspect that high blood pressure may also play a role, … Different systems of the brain respond differently to disease, … White matter damage affects connections within the brain’s language network, which leads to an overall reduction in network activity." -Kirk M. Welker, M.D., assistant professor of radiology in the College of Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
(Source: medicalxpress.com)
'Selfish' DNA in animal mitochondria offers possible tool to study aging
Researchers at Oregon State University have discovered, for the first time in any animal species, a type of “selfish” mitochondrial DNA that is actually hurting the organism and lessening its chance to survive – and bears a strong similarity to some damage done to human cells as they age.
Such selfish mitochondrial DNA has been found before in plants, but not animals. In this case, the discovery was made almost by accident during some genetic research being done on a nematode, Caenorhabditis briggsae – a type of small roundworm.
“We weren’t even looking for this when we found it, at first we thought it must be a laboratory error,” said Dee Denver, an OSU associate professor of zoology. “Selfish DNA is not supposed to be found in animals. But it could turn out to be fairly important as a new genetic model to study the type of mitochondrial decay that is associated with human aging.”
Musicians’ Brains Might Have an Edge on Aging
It’s been said that music soothes the savage beast, but if you’re the one playing the instrument it might benefit your brain.
A growing body of evidence suggests that learning to play an instrument and continuing to practice and play it may offer mental benefits throughout life. Hearing has also been shown to be positively affected by making music.
Implantable Telescope Technology
Implantable Miniature Telescope along with the cornea, enlarges images in front of the eye approximately 2.2 or 2.7 times their normal size (depending on the model used). The magnification allows central images to be projected onto healthy perimacular areas of the retina instead of the macula alone, where breakdown of photoreceptors and loss of vision has occurred. This helps reduce the ‘blind spot’ and allows the patient to distinguish and discern images that may have been unrecognizable or difficult to see.
The telescope is about the size of a pea (3.6 mm diameter; 4.4 mm length) and is surgically placed inside the eye.
The Aging Brain Is More Malleable Than Previously Believed
There is growing evidence that, beyond what was previously believed, the adult human brain is remarkably malleable and capable of new feats — even in the last decades of life.
In fact, new experiences can trigger major physical changes in the brain within just a few days, and certain conditions can accelerate this physical, chemical and functional remodeling of the brain.
"We used to think that the brain was completely formed by development and its basic structure didn’t change much in adults, but as research went on we discovered that wasn’t true, at least in the cerebral cortex," explains Randy Bruno, a member of the Kavli Institute for Brain Science at Columbia University. "We now know that an underlying portion of the brain called the thalamus, which feeds the cortex information from our senses, is also remarkably plastic."
Concussions and head impacts may accelerate brain aging
Jul 31, 2012 by Laura Bailey
Concussions and even lesser head impacts may speed up the brain’s natural aging process by causing signaling pathways in the brain to break down more quickly than they would in someone who has never suffered a brain injury or concussion.
The photos compare images of two brains, one with and without head injury. The red areas indicates electrical activity in response to the task researchers asked study participants to perform, and non-injured brains show more red, thus more electrical activity during the task. Image courtesy of Steven Broglio
Researchers from the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology and the U-M Health System looked at college students with and without a history of concussion and found changes in gait, balance and in the brain’s electrical activity, specifically attention and impulse control, said Steven Broglio, assistant professor of kinesiology and director of the Neurotrauma Research Laboratory.
The declines were present in the brain injury group up to six years after injury, though the differences between the study groups were very subtle, and outwardly all of the participants looked and acted the same.
Broglio, who is also affiliated with Michigan NeuroSport, stressed that the studies lay out a hypothesis where concussions and head impacts accelerate the brain’s natural aging process.
The study, “Cognitive decline and aging: The role of concussive and subconcussive impacts,” appears in the July issue of journal Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews.
"The last thing we want is for people to panic. Just because you’ve had a concussion does not mean your brain will age more quickly or you’ll get Alzheimer’s," Broglio said. "We are only proposing how being hit in the head may lead to these other conditions, but we don’t know how it all goes together just yet."
Broglio stressed that other factors, such as lifestyle choices, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical exercise, family history and whether or not you “exercise” your brain also impact the brain’s aging process. Concussion may only be one small factor.
To begin to understand how concussions might impact brain activity and its signaling pathways, researchers asked the participants to perform certain tasks in front of a computer, and took images of their brains. The brains of the nonconcussed group showed a greater area of electrical activation than the participants with a history of brain injury.
The signaling pathways in our brains are analogous to a five-lane highway. On a new highway, traffic runs smoothly and quickly as all lanes are in top shape. However, during normal aging, the asphalt deteriorates and lanes might become bumpy or even unusable. Traffic slows.
Similarly, our brains start with all pathways clear to transfer electrical signals rapidly. As we age, the brain’s pathways break down and can’t transfer the information as quickly. Concussive and other impacts to the head may result in a ‘pothole’ on the brain’s highway, causing varying degrees of damage and speeding the pathway’s natural deterioration.
"What we don’t know is if you had a single concussion in high school, does that mean you will get dementia at age 50?" Broglio said. "Clinically, we don’t see that. What we think is it will be a dose response.
"So, if you played soccer and sustained some head impacts and maybe one concussion, then you may have a little risk. If you went on and played in college and took more head balls and sustained two more concussions, you’re probably at a little bigger risk. Then if you play professionally for a few years, and take more hits to the head, you increase the risk even more. We believe it’s a cumulative effect."
In the next phase of study, researchers will look at people in their 20s, 40s and 60s who did and did not sustain concussions during high school sports. They hope to learn if there is an increasing effect of concussion as the study subjects age. If interested in participating in the study, email neurotraumalab.umich@gmail.com.
Researchers from the departments of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and Neurology, and the Michigan Alzheimer’s Disease Center also participated in the study.
Source: University of Michigan
Older adults can take part in a USF study that is showing benefits in fight against cognitive decline.
If physical exercise can strengthen muscles, can mental exercise strengthen brains? And if so, for how long?
It appears the answer is yes and for several years, according to University of South Florida researchers. Older adults who are interested in trying it out for themselves can take part in a study now being conducted at USF’s School of Aging Studies in the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences.
A team of researchers is investigating treatments to ward off the cognitive declines associated with what is considered normal aging and even Alzheimer’s disease. Prevention or delaying the onset of either or both are the goals of having elderly people work out with a computerized brain fitness program designed to improve their cognitive skills.
The workout equipment consists of a computer station – and that’s it. Research assistants provide one brief training session and the participants identify a variety of visual and auditory targets designed to engage their mental faculties.
Stress May Cause Women’s Brains to Age Earlier
By Makini Brice | July 26, 2012
Scientists were surprised, expecting the areas of the brain to age more slowly, or even delayed, than those of men.
Photo: Microsoft
Even though the gap is closing now in many high-income countries, on average, women tend to live longer lives than men do. Despite – or perhaps because of – women’s physical longevity, women tend to battle cognitive decline in much greater numbers than men do. In fact, women are more likely to suffer from various types of dementia, including the much-maligned Alzheimer’s disease. Now researchers think that they have an answer to the cause of this double-edged sword: stress. Specifically, stress ages women’s brains more quickly than it does men.
Scientists, and every-day observers, have noted that some body parts age at different rates than others do. As people become older, some genes become more active while others become less so. These changes in activity can be monitored through a “transcriptome,” which collects data on all the RNA – the transcripts that carry DNA’s instructions to cells. A multinational team from Australia, China, Germany, and the United States set out to analyze the transcriptomes for 55 different men and women of various ages.
The researchers were fascinated by what they found. According to the abstract of their article published in Aging Cell, “In the superior frontal gyrus (SFG), a part of the prefrontal cortex, we observed manifest differences between the two sexes in the timing of age-related changes, i.e.sexual heterochrony. Intriguingly, age-related expression changes predominantly occurred earlier, or at a faster pace, in females compared to males. These changes included decreased energy production and neural function, and up-regulation of the immune response, all major features of brain aging.”
In other words, researchers found that the brains of women aged more quickly than those of men, especially in the prefrontal cortex. Scientists were surprised, expecting the areas of the brain to age more slowly, or even delayed, than those of men.
In the superior frontal gyrus, researchers found 667 genes that were expressed differently by gender during the aging process. Within that number, 98 percent were associated with faster aging in women.
Scientists were not convinced that the reason lay in biological differences. In fact, since only half of women displayed accelerated aging, they were convinced that the difference was environmental. Researchers theorize that stress is the difference-maker, and that it affects women’s brains more severely than it does men. While a researcher unaffiliated with the study said that the difference could also be caused by inflammation,
Mehmet Somel and his team have conducted similar research on monkeys that confirms their stress theory.
Source: Medical Daily