Tiny Messengers Running Amok

Healthy Aging

Aging is Caused by Inflammation
(aka Inflammaging)

The ability to reverse aging is no longer science fiction. Sounds too good to be true? In this series, we are talking about the latest peer-reviewed science on how slowing, and even reversing aging is becoming a reality.

This week, let’s talk about two important age-reversing targets: poor cellular signaling & inflammaging.

Great! Wait – what are poor cellular signaling & inflammaging?

As we get older, our cells stop communicating properly with each other, creating off-balanced immunity and metabolism. This loss of whole-body homeostasis incites overactive immune responses and impairs our glucose and lipid metabolism. Keeping proper communication lines open between our cells brings our body back into balance and reverses this key hallmark of aging.

Aging is caused by inflammation (aka inflammaging)

When our cells aren’t listening to each other, they often start to shout. This shouting comes in the form of proinflammatory cytokines – tiny messengers running amok to incite chronic, low level inflammation throughout our body and brain.

As described by Fulop et al. in Gerontology, inflammaging plays an important role in the manifestation of chronic aging-related diseases, including:

• Cardiovascular (heart) diseases
• Neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease
• Respiratory diseases
• Cancer
• Frailty syndrome

While inflammaging has been traditionally grouped under the cellular signaling hallmark of aging, its role in causing aging-related breakdown is so important that Lopez-Otin et al. just expanded the list of hallmarks of aging to 12 (versus 9) factors, now including inflammaging on its own.

I get it – chronic inflammation makes us age faster. So, how are scientists aiming to stem inflammaging?

As described in Dugan et al., there are a number of mechanisms scientists are pursuing to calm inflammaging and slow aging rates, including:

• Taming the proinflammatory environment of senescent cells. A couple of weeks ago, we talked about how senescent “zombie” cells create a toxic, proinflammatory environment. As described by Rodriquez et al., if we can clean up this toxic environment, we can remove a key driver of inflammaging.
• Targeting specific proinflammatory cytokines. Cytokines that most often contribute to inflammaging include TNFɑ, IL-6, IL-1β, C reactive protein (CRP), serum amyloid A, fibrinogen, and CXCL9 (MIG). Thus, interventions that can tame these cytokines are being sought to stem inflammaging.
• Leading pharmacologic interventions. Leading pharmacologic interventions being studied for inflammaging include metformin (an AMPK activator) and rapamycin (an mTOR inhibitor).

Beyond these interventions, it is also well established that healthy diets (such as the Mediterranean diet) and physical activity can lower inflammation and support healthy aging. So, scientific advancements aside – don’t forget to eat your greens and go for a walk!