Renal function in familial longevity: the Leiden Longevity Study

Harnessing Genetics to Extend Lifespan and Healthspan: Current Progress and Future Directions

Aging is inevitable, but the lifespan (duration of life) and healthspan (healthy aging) vary greatly among individuals and across species. Unlocking the secrets behind these differences has captivated scientific curiosity for ages. This review presents relevant recent advances in genetics and cell biology that are shedding new light by untangling how subtle changes in conserved genes, pathways, and epigenetic factors influence organismal senescence and associated declines. Biogerontology is a complex and rapidly growing field aimed at elucidating genetic modifications that extend lifespan and healthspan. This review explores gerontogenes, genes influencing lifespan and healthspan across species. Though subtle differences exist, long-lived individuals such as centenarians demonstrate extended healthspans, and numerous studies confirm the heritability of longevity/healthspan genes. Importantly, genes and gerontogenes are directly and indirectly involved in DNA repair, insulin/IGF-1 and mTOR signaling pathways, long non-coding RNAs, sirtuins, and heat shock proteins. The complex interactions between genetics and epigenetics are teased apart. While more research into optimizing healthspan is needed, conserved gerontogenes offer synergistic potential to forestall aging and age-related diseases. Understanding complex longevity genetics brings closer the goal of extending not only lifespan but quality years of life. The primary aim of human Biogerontology is to enhance lifespan and healthspan, but the question remains: are current genetic modifications effectively promoting healthy aging? This article collates the advancements in gerontogenes that enhance lifespan and improve healthspan alongside their potential challenges.

Relationships among Development, Growth, Body Size, Reproduction, Aging, and Longevity - Trade-Offs and Pace-Of-Life

Relationships of growth, metabolism, reproduction, and body size to the biological process of aging and longevity have been studied for decades and various unifying "theories of aging" have been proposed to account for the observed associations. In general, fast development, early sexual maturation leading to early reproductive effort, as well as production of many offspring, have been linked to shorter lifespans. The relationship of adult body size to longevity includes a remarkable contrast between the positive correlation in comparisons between different species and the negative correlation seen in comparisons of individuals within the same species. We now propose that longevity and presumably also the rate of aging are related to the "pace-of-life." A slow pace-of-life including slow growth, late sexual maturation, and a small number of offspring, predicts slow aging and long life. The fast pace of life (rapid growth, early sexual maturation, and major reproductive effort) is associated with faster aging and shorter life, presumably due to underlying trade-offs. The proposed relationships between the pace-of-life and longevity apply to both inter- and intra-species comparisons as well as to dietary, genetic, and pharmacological interventions that extend life and to evidence for early life programming of the trajectory of aging. Although available evidence suggests the causality of at least some of these associations, much further work will be needed to verify this interpretation and to identify mechanisms that are responsible.

12-month survival in nonagenarians inside the Mugello study: on the way to live a century

Background

Life expectancy has increased over the last century and a growing number of people is reaching age 90 years and over. However, data on nonagenarians’ health trends are scarce due to difficulties in investigating this specific population. This study aims to identify risk factors for one-year mortality in nonagenarians using data collected within the “Mugello Study”.

Methods

Complete information on sociodemographic data, cognitive and functional status, lifestyle, medical history, and drug use was collected from 433 nonagenarians, as well as information about survival after 1 year from the interview.

Results

The sample included 314 women (72.5%) and 119 men (27.5%) with a median age of 92 years (range 90-99 years). The mortality rate was 20.3% (88 deaths). After adjustment for age and sex, a significantly higher risk of dying within 12 months was observed in individuals with more severe cognitive impairment (HR = 5.011, p < 0.001), more severe disability in basic activities of daily living (HR = 4.193, p < 0.001), sedentary lifestyle (HR = 3.367, p < 0.001), higher number of drugs assumed (HR = 1.118, p = 0.031), and kidney dysfunction (HR = 2.609, p = 0.004). When all the variables were included in the analysis, only older age (HR = 1.079, p = 0.048), lower cognitive function (HR = 2.859, p = 0.015), sedentary lifestyle (HR = 2.030, p = 0.026), and kidney dysfunction (HR = 2.322, p = 0.018) remained significantly associated with reduced survival.

Conclusions

Data from the Mugello study support the hypothesis that survival at 12 months in nonagenarians is not a stochastic process and that older age, reduced cognitive function, sedentary lifestyle, and the presence of kidney dysfunction are associated with mortality.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12877-022-02908-9.

Altered lipid metabolism in the aging kidney identified by three layered omic analysis

Aging-associated diseases and their comorbidities affect the life of a constantly growing proportion of the population in developed countries. At the center of these comorbidities are changes of kidney structure and function as age-related chronic kidney disease predisposes to the development of cardiovascular diseases such as stroke, myocardial infarction or heart failure. To detect molecular mechanisms involved in kidney aging, we analyzed gene expression profiles of kidneys from adult and aged wild-type mice by transcriptomic, proteomic and targeted lipidomic methodologies. Interestingly, transcriptome and proteome analyses revealed differential expression of genes primarily involved in lipid metabolism and immune response. Additional lipidomic analyses uncovered significant age-related differences in the total amount of phosphatidylethanolamines, phosphatidylcholines and sphingomyelins as well as in subspecies of phosphatidylserines and ceramides with age. By integration of these datasets we identified Aldh1a1, a key enzyme in vitamin A metabolism specifically expressed in the medullary ascending limb, as one of the most prominent upregulated proteins in old kidneys. Moreover, ceramidase Asah1 was highly expressed in aged kidneys, consistent with a decrease in ceramide C16. In summary, our data suggest that changes in lipid metabolism are involved in the process of kidney aging and in the development of chronic kidney disease.

An in vivo study on brain microstructure in biological and chronological ageing

This study aimed to investigate whether magnetization transfer imaging (MTI) parameters of cortical gray and white matter and subcortical gray matter structures differ between subjects enriched for human familial longevity and control subjects to provide a thorough description of the brain phenotype of familial longevity. Moreover, we aimed to describe cerebral ageing effects on MTI parameters in an elderly cohort. All subjects were included from the Leiden Longevity Study and underwent 3 Tesla MTI of the brain. In total, 183 offspring of nonagenarian siblings, who are enriched for familial factors of longevity, were contrasted with 163 environmentally and age-matched controls. No differences in cortical and subcortical gray matter and white matter MTI parameters were found between offspring and control subjects using histogram-based and voxel-wise analyses. Cortical gray matter and white matter MTI parameters decreased with increasing chronological age (all p < 0.001). Decrease of white matter magnetization transfer ratio (MTR) was homogeneous throughout the whole mean white matter skeleton except for parts of the callosal splenium and partly the posterior limb of the internal capsule and superior region of the corona radiata (p < 0.05). Mean MTR of subcortical gray matter structures decreased with increasing age (p amygdala, caudate nucleus and putamen < 0.001; p pallidum = 0.001, p thalamus = 0.002). In conclusion, the brain phenotype of human familial longevity is - at a mean age of 66 years - not characterized by preserved macromolecular brain tissue integrity.