Perspective |
Featured
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Research Highlight |
As lifespans grow, work time while healthy lags
The gap between average life expectancy and the number of years people are healthy and on the job is widening, with potentially grave consequences for pensioners.
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Outlook |
Support for LGBTQ+ people in later life
The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of tailoring health-care services to older lesbian, gay and trans people as they age.
- Trish Hafford-Letchfield
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Outlook |
How the COVID-19 pandemic might age us
Infectious disease, loneliness and stress can affect cellular ageing, making us less healthy and shortening lifespans.
- Emily Sohn
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Outlook |
Research round-up: Ageing
Frailty measures, microbial ‘fountains of youth’, screening for social isolation, and other highlights from studies into ageing.
- Elizabeth Svoboda
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Outlook |
Tackling the crisis of care for older people: lessons from India and Japan
Family ties in the world’s second-most-populous country are loosening as more Indians move for work. Farther east, one in three Japanese people will be over 65 by 2036. What can these countries teach us?
- Benjamin Plackett
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Outlook |
Robots rise to meet the challenge of caring for old people
Robotics technology is improving, but its routine use in the home, hospital and care settings could be a long way off.
- Neil Savage
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Outlook |
Turning back time with epigenetic clocks
If biological ageing can be slowed, halted or rewound, are the machine-learning algorithms the best way to measure it? Some experts are unconvinced.
- Liam Drew
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Outlook |
Does the human lifespan have a limit?
Super-centenarians offer clues as demographers and scientists lock horns over one of the world’s oldest research questions.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Outlook |
The biological clean-ups that could combat age-related disease
Could targeting autophagy — often likened to a cellular trash management system — extend life? Some researchers are unconvinced.
- Elie Dolgin
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Outline |
Video: Rebuilding a retina
Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of blindness in older adults, but techniques are being developed to offset the worst of the damage.
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Outline |
The quest to treat dry age-related macular degeneration
A raft of approaches for preventing loss of vision owing to this disease are showing their mettle in clinical trials.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Outline |
A visual guide to repairing the retina
People who develop the dry form of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) currently have no effective options for preserving their vision. But several promising therapeutic avenues are being explored that might just change that.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Research Highlight |
Some of Earth’s longest-lived fish show how to reach extreme ages
Genomic analysis of Pacific rockfishes, which can survive for more than 200 years, provides insight into the biology of longevity.
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News & Views |
Evidence that overnight fasting could extend healthy lifespan
A feeding schedule of prolonged overnight fasting periods extends healthy lifespan in fruit flies by promoting night-time autophagy, a process in which material in cells is degraded and recycled.
- Stephen L. Helfand
- & Rafael de Cabo
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Article |
Circadian autophagy drives iTRF-mediated longevity
Circadian-regulated autophagy contributes to the health benefits of intermittent time-restricted feeding in Drosophila.
- Matt Ulgherait
- , Adil M. Midoun
- & Mimi Shirasu-Hiza
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Research Highlight |
Poo from young mice improves their elders’ memories
Substances made by gut microbes could account for a cognitive boost from faecal transplants.
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News & Views |
A stem-cell basis for skeletal ageing
How ageing contributes to bone loss is unclear. In ageing mice, skeletal stem cells lose their ability to generate bone-forming cells called osteoblasts, and instead promote the generation of bone-resorbing cells called osteoclasts.
- Matthew B. Greenblatt
- & Shawon Debnath
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Article |
Aged skeletal stem cells generate an inflammatory degenerative niche
An analysis of skeletal stem cells in mice reveals that bone ageing occurs at the level of local niches affecting skeletal and haematopoietic lineage output, which may influence systemic aspects of multi-organ physiological ageing.
- Thomas H. Ambrosi
- , Owen Marecic
- & Charles K. F. Chan
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News & Views |
Genomic analysis identifies variants that can predict the timing of menopause
A broad analysis has identified genetic variants that influence age at natural menopause. The results implicate mechanisms such as DNA-damage repair and give insights into the potential for predicting and treating early menopause.
- Krina T. Zondervan
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Review Article |
The role of retrotransposable elements in ageing and age-associated diseases
This Review discusses how the activity of retrotransposons influences ageing and the role of these mobile genetic elements in age-related diseases and their treatment.
- Vera Gorbunova
- , Andrei Seluanov
- & John M. Sedivy
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Article |
Genetic insights into biological mechanisms governing human ovarian ageing
Hundreds of genetic loci associated with age at menopause, combined with experimental evidence in mice, highlight mechanisms of reproductive ageing across the lifespan.
- Katherine S. Ruth
- , Felix R. Day
- & John R. B. Perry
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News & Views |
Protein pile-up plays havoc in ageing nematode worms
An analysis in ageing nematode worms reveals reductions in the tagging of certain proteins for clearance. This can lead to the accumulation of unnecessary proteins, in turn impairing cellular and tissue function.
- Bart P. Braeckman
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Article
| Open AccessRewiring of the ubiquitinated proteome determines ageing in C. elegans
Global loss of targeted protein degradation with age results in harmful accumulation of specific proteins in worms.
- Seda Koyuncu
- , Rute Loureiro
- & David Vilchez
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Article |
Gut cytokines modulate olfaction through metabolic reprogramming of glia
Glial metabolic reprogramming by gut-derived cytokines in Drosophila results in lasting changes in the sensory system of an ageing organism
- Xiaoyu Tracy Cai
- , Hongjie Li
- & Heinrich Jasper
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News |
‘Inflammation clock’ can reveal body’s biological age
Using machine learning, researchers created a tool that might help doctors improve people’s healthy lifespan.
- Max Kozlov
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Article |
An aged immune system drives senescence and ageing of solid organs
An aged, senescent immune system has a causal role in driving systemic ageing, and the targeting of senescent immune cells with senolytic drugs has the potential to suppress morbidities associated with old age.
- Matthew J. Yousefzadeh
- , Rafael R. Flores
- & Laura J. Niedernhofer
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Review Article |
The central role of DNA damage in the ageing process
This Review examines the evidence showing that DNA damage is associated with ageing phenotypes, suggesting that it may have a central role as the cause of ageing.
- Björn Schumacher
- , Joris Pothof
- & Jan H. J. Hoeijmakers
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Article |
Meningeal lymphatics affect microglia responses and anti-Aβ immunotherapy
Meningeal lymphatic drainage can affect the microglial inflammatory response and anti-amyloid-β immunotherapy in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease.
- Sandro Da Mesquita
- , Zachary Papadopoulos
- & Jonathan Kipnis
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Research Highlight |
More than 100 centenarians help to reveal a biomarker for long life
Blood levels of a protein hint at the survival prospects of people over 90 years old.
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News & Views |
Reversal of immune-cell shutdown protects the ageing brain
Immune cells called macrophages have been found to shut down major metabolic pathways during ageing. Restoring metabolism in these cells is sufficient to alleviate age-associated cognitive decline in mice.
- Jonas J. Neher
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News & Views |
Anti-ageing effects of protein restriction unpacked
Two animal studies show that restricting the dietary intake of branched-chain amino acids can extend lifespan by modulating the mTOR signalling pathway. But more research is needed before this diet should be recommended in people.
- Cristal M. Hill
- & Matt Kaeberlein
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Article |
Chaperone-mediated autophagy sustains haematopoietic stem-cell function
Haematopoietic stem cells show progressive functional decline with age that can be reversed by stimulation of chaperone-mediated autophagy in old mice and aged humans.
- Shuxian Dong
- , Qian Wang
- & Ana Maria Cuervo
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Nature Video |
Rewinding the biological clock helps blind mice to see
Cells in the eye appear to be ‘younger’ after treatment
- Shamini Bundell
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Nature Podcast |
Cellular ageing: turning back the clock restores vision in mice
A trio of genes may be key to making cells young again, and ultra precise measurement of a fundamental physics constant.
- Noah Baker
- & Nick Howe
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News & Views |
Sight restored by turning back the epigenetic clock
Neurons progressively deteriorate with age and lose resilience to injury. It emerges that treatment with three transcription factors can re-endow neurons in the mature eye with youthful characteristics and the capacity to regenerate.
- Andrew D. Huberman
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News |
Reversal of biological clock restores vision in old mice
‘Reprogramming’ approach seems to make old cells young again.
- Heidi Ledford
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Article |
Reprogramming to recover youthful epigenetic information and restore vision
Expression of three Yamanaka transcription factors in mouse retinal ganglion cells restores youthful DNA methylation patterns, promotes axon regeneration after injury, and reverses vision loss in a mouse model of glaucoma and in aged mice, suggesting that mammalian tissues retain a record of youthful epigenetic information that can be accessed to improve tissue function.
- Yuancheng Lu
- , Benedikt Brommer
- & David A. Sinclair
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Research Highlight |
For better health, don’t sleep your age
Older people with ‘young’ sleep patterns have more robust cognition than those whose rest is typical for their age.
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News Feature |
How anti-ageing drugs could boost COVID vaccines in older people
COVID-19 poses the greatest threat to older people, but vaccines often don’t work well in this group. Scientists hope drugs that rejuvenate the immune system will help.
- Cassandra Willyard
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News & Views |
Molecules in the blood of older people promote cancer spread
A molecule produced by the metabolism of proteins and fats has been found to accumulate in the blood of older people, and to endow cancer cells with the ability to spread from one site in the body to others.
- Hai Wang
- & Xiang H.-F. Zhang
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Article |
Age-induced accumulation of methylmalonic acid promotes tumour progression
Ageing in humans is associated with an increase in circulating methylmalonic acid, which induces expression of SOX4 and promotes tumour progression.
- Ana P. Gomes
- , Didem Ilter
- & John Blenis
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Outlook |
Living, breathing proof
A cadre of older patients with cystic fibrosis have defied the life expectancy associated with their illness. They’re inspiring and educating others about surviving with the disease long-term.
- Roxanne Khamsi
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Article |
Extracellular proteostasis prevents aggregation during pathogenic attack
A systematic analysis of the proteostasis network of secreted proteins in Caenorhabditis elegans identifies numerous regulators of protein homeostasis outside the cell, and highlights the contribution of extracellular proteostasis to host defence.
- Ivan Gallotta
- , Aneet Sandhu
- & Della C. David
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Research Highlight |
Old age’s hallmarks are delayed in dieting rats
Cutting rodents’ caloric intake slows cellular changes that normally set in with time.
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Article |
Two conserved epigenetic regulators prevent healthy ageing
Two epigenetic regulators—identified in an RNA interference screen in Caenhorhabditis elegans, and conserved in mammals—diminish mitochondrial function and accelerate the age-related deterioration of behaviour.
- Jie Yuan
- , Si-Yuan Chang
- & Shi-Qing Cai
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Article |
Developmental ROS individualizes organismal stress resistance and lifespan
A subpopulation of Caenorhabditis elegans, in which there is a naturally occurring transient increase in reactive oxygen species during early development, exhibits increased stress resistance, improved redox homeostasis and prolonged lifespan, which are linked to a global decrease in level of the histone mark H3K4me3.
- Daphne Bazopoulou
- , Daniela Knoefler
- & Ursula Jakob
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Outlook |
Tailoring vaccines for older people and the very young
Infants and those over 65 are at the highest risk of infectious disease. A better understanding of age-specific immunity is needed to design vaccines that work for them.
- Amanda Keener
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Nature Podcast |
Podcast: Nature’s 2019 PhD survey, and older women in sci-fi novels
Listen to the latest science updates, brought to you by Nick Howe and Shamini Bundell.