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Mid-old cells are a potential target for anti-aging interventions in the elderly
- harles 3y agoCan someone explain why this is interesting? It looks like a directionally interesting anti-aging study, but without any major breakthroughs. I'm curious what folks upvoting see in the study that I'm missing.
- kalium-xyz 3y agoIts further evidence for a hypothesis on the mechanism of aging. Personally I just wanna know how aging works
- graphe 3y agoDon't your telomeres get shorter, your DNA gets damaged and it doesn't replicate correctly anymore? Some animals can be immortal like lobsters but face limits like their physical size can kill them when they molt enough.
- tambourine_man 3y agoI think the consensus is that it’s part of the process, but not the whole picture, but I’m no expert.
- throwaway60703 3y agoYes, that's one of around 50 currently recognized factors of aging.
- echelon 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallmarks_of_aging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallmarks_of_aging This isn't comprehensive, though. I don't see intracellular or extracellular waste accumulation, for instance.
- calepayson 3y agoI'm not sure if this is one of the consensus primary causes but the most compelling explanation I've heard is capillary damage. Red blood cells and capillaries have roughly the same diameter leading to constant friction. Your body repairs the capillaries but, given enough time, it makes mistakes. As these mistakes pile up your circulatory system, your body's supply chain, slowly gets less efficient. This leads to every cell in your body gets the energy it needs a little later, and has to hold onto waste for a little longer.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoIf aging was just DNA errors, wouldn't it be far less consistent in how it effected people?
- Torkel 3y ago"Remarkably, the microenvironmental change and the functional decline of mid-old cells could be reversed by a young cell-originated protein, SLIT2. Our data identify functional reversion of mid-old cells as a potential method to prevent or ameliorate aspects of aging-related tissue dysfunction." I think this sounds promising.
- RobotToaster 3y agoSo, potentially, we can synthesise this SLIT2 and inject people with a bunch of it?
- Torkel 3y agoThat is, unfortunately!, not how these things work. But it allows people to do more targeted studies, and (many years of research later) perhaps find a drug that can have some impact.
- vanderZwan 3y agoOr sometimes we get really lucky and just find a food or spice that upregulates/downregulates the right gene or affects the right enzyme (e.g. ginger contains compounds that suppress the inflammation triggering enzyme COX-2 without affecting the related COX-1 enzyme, which is actually beneficial. Most inflammation-reducing drugs affect both). Although I'm sure we'd have noticed it by now if a food item targeted these genes (assuming they do significantly affect how healthily people age).
- woliveirajr 3y agoThanks for the ginger example, it was tangential but gave me some ideas :-)
- goatlabs 3y ago[flagged]
- morbicer 3y ago[flagged]
- stoneman24 3y agoIf we understand the mechanisms of aging, perhaps we can reduce the health effects of aging. This might be an easier target than increasing overall life expectancy. Thus reducing the impact on society of caring for seniors. As I understand it, the metabolic rate in most people is pretty good and constant until about 60 and starts to drop off. I would be happy with a treatment that provides good strong health from 60 to 100 and then a sudden death. I don’t want to be infirm/disabled by age, not able to enjoy life and be a burden to my family.
- defenestration 3y agoThere is a social issue around death that is quite complex. A wish for a sudden peaceful death at a certain old age is not an easy one. Family, doctors, society and laws should be aligned on this. Right now the norm (at least in the Netherlands) is too keep a person alive as long as reasonably possible.
- block_dagger 3y agoMy mother is going through a kind of hell created by laws that prevent her from ending her life as she wishes. I hope dignity around death for the elderly becomes more of a public issue.
- gumby 3y agoMy grandmother starved herself to death at 97 because any other approach was then illegal (for anyone else to facilitate). All her friends were dead and she didn’t really like old people. As her vision and hearing started to deteriorate she figured it was not worth waiting for a letter from the Queen.
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- heisenbit 3y ago[flagged]
- radu_floricica 3y agoI'll never understand this particular mindset. I mean, I can get _some_ of the fallacies involved. Pure envy. Scope insensitivity. But it just doesn't explain it for me. People buying high end audio gear have disposable income and spend obscene amounts of money on their hobby, and yet they get at most mild ridicule. Old people wanting _not to die_ get hate. How do people even get here?
- jbstack 3y agoIt's also shortsighted. You might never develop a taste for high end audio gear. But you certainly will age and die. Unlike many things it's a problem that affects every single one of us.
- airtonix 3y ago[dead]
- magnusmundus 3y agoI think the reaction is at least partially based on the loss of precisely that certainty: there is a sense of comfort in that no matter how unacceptable someone’s actions or ideas are to us, they will die, regardless of who they are — eventually. The thought of that eventuality becoming unusually distant in the future threatens that comfort. Doubly so when only the powerful will live longer, which will come first, everyone seems to agree.
- _w1tm 3y agoInstead of resigning to “at least they will one day die”, wouldn’t it better to hold rich people responsible? This argument just sounds too much like in Christian theology where the “evil” are punished in the afterlife, which is just a mix of defeatism and propaganda.
- johnnyworker 3y agoSure, "the" elderly. Everyone who is suffering from aging will be helped. No special treatment for powerful people, it'll be all about "the elderly".
- Tr03P 3y agoWhy throw out the baby with the bath water, just because the rich will live longer, no one should. This is the feeling I get everytime I see a comment that it will be only for the rich and powerful. I don't think that will be the case, as there will be a gold rush once the possibility is proven and visible, everyone will try to get it, even the naysayers. It will be more like the crash of prices from the Spanish mines in south America.
- caesil 3y agoThink of all the mundane technology we use every single day that was, when it was first introduced, priced for the rich and powerful. And then imagine if we'd used that as a reason not to produce it.
- altairTF 3y agoAnd there is a lot of this sentiment around, specially with young people
- tuatoru 3y agoYeah. I wish I had saved the quote, but someone said something along the lines of "the rich get new technologies when they are expensive and sucky; the rest of us get them when the kinks have been ironed out." If you're worried about the rich getting things unfairly, focus on tax policy and closing all the thousands of loopholes. That's a lifetime's work.
- johnnyworker 3y ago> This is the feeling I get everytime I see a comment that it will be only for the rich and powerful. That's not a "feeling", that are words you put into my mouth, to then call it a "feeling" of yours. And that's the top voted reply. Just lol.
- roschdal 3y ago[flagged]
- throw310822 3y agoTaking from a comment above: "Remarkably, the microenvironmental change and the functional decline of mid-old cells could be reversed by a young cell-originated protein, SLIT2" I wonder then if this could be the magical factor in the blood of younger people. If there is indeed one or a small set of factors that induce the positive effects of young blood transfusions, then that type of "rejuvenation" becomes available to everyone and without any ethical issue.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tgvaughan 3y agoAside: figure 1 epitomizes everything that I hate about high-impact results-first journals: everything has to be packed into this one figure because nobody's expected to read anything else. No disrespect to the authors, these journals force you to express your work in this reader-hostile fashion where the most important parts of the paper wind up buried in the supplement.
- ramraj07 3y agoFormatting wise this is a very poorly made figure. I sincerely hope this is not the current standards for what’s considered to be a good journal nowadays.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pvg 3y agoPlease don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- tgvaughan 3y agoSorry, I wasn't intending to provoke.
- 5643777909 3y ago[dead]
- rasengan 3y agofisetin also helps for senescent cells.
- grammers 3y agoI hope they'll get on with this research faster. Else it'll be too later - at lest for me personally.