Aging

One of the ways to study longevity has been engineering fruit flies whose genes can be turned on and off by a synthetic hormone, allowing detailed studies of the effects of single genes on life span. They do that because many of the genes have close relatives in humans. Unfortunately, the hormone used to perform the studies turns out to be anything but neutral, according to a new study.  If so, it means studies on the genetic roots of aging will need a second look, because a common lab chemical can extend the life span of female fruit flies by 68 percent. John Tower, professor of…

Your closest friends are advocates and see the best in you, but they are also observers of the personality traits that could send you to an early grave, according to a new paper. The authors say that that your personality at an early age (20s) can predict how long you will live past 75 years - and that close friends are usually better than you at recognizing these traits.  Male participants seen by their friends as more open and conscientious ended up living longer. Female participants whose friends rated them as high on emotional stability and agreeableness also enjoyed longer…

A study has found that reducing expression of the Myc gene - found in the genomes of all animals, ranging from ancestral single-celled organisms to humans - significantly increased the healthy lifespan of laboratory mice, the first such finding regarding this gene in a mammalian species. Myc is a major topic of biomedical research and has been shown to be a central regulator of cell proliferation, growth, and death. Though animals cannot live without it, in humans and mice too much expression of the protein that Myc encodes has been closely linked to cancer, making it a well-known but elusive…

If someone won't move around for 20 minutes a day, can anything more be done to help people get off the couch? Too much sitting has been linked to increased risk of chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and some types of cancer. Current guidelines suggest adults do 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity a week, but more than a third (35.6%) of adults worldwide don't do that. And the proportion of time spent being inactive rises with age: from 55% (7.7 hours) at 20-29 years, to 67% (9.6 hours) in those aged 70-79 years. Two articles in The BMJ argue that the 150 minute target is…

There is a lot of talk about increasing longevity but 50 years of increasing frailty, doctor visits and overall decline is not really an improvement over 30 years of it. A new study shows that by focusing on the genetics involved in increasing longevity, we won't be helping people much at all; genes that increase longevity may not significantly increase healthy lifespan. A study of long-lived mutant C. elegans by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School shows that the genetically altered worms spend a greater portion of their life in a frail state and exhibit less…

Staying active allows you to age optimally, according to a small study in The Journal of Physiology which analyzed older amateur cyclists and found that many had levels of physiological function that would place them at a much younger age compared to the general population. The authors say this debunks the common assumption that aging automatically makes you more frail than younger people. The researchers recruited 84 male and 41 female cycling enthusiasts aged 55 to 79 to explore how the aging process affects the human body, and whether specific physiological markers can be used to determine…

Some people have the appearance of a young shape even as they age. Good genes and clean living, it is said. But the nature and nurture argument has a new companion - historical context - at least in sociology. A new study claims evidence that the role of genetics in complex traits, including obesity, varies over time. Both the era in which scientific research is conducted and the era in which subjects were born may have an impact on the degree to which genetic factors are present in scientific data.  "I liken it to a kind of uncertainty principle, or 'observer effect,' for genetics,"…

If you can't balance on one leg for 20 seconds you are more likely to have small blood vessel damage in the brain and reduced cognitive function, even if you otherwise seem healthy, according to new research in Stroke. The study consisted of 841 women and 546 men, average age of 67. To measure one-leg standing time, participants stood with their eyes open and raised one leg. The maximum time for keeping the leg raised was 60 seconds. Participants performed this examination twice and the better of the two times was used in the study analysis. Cerebral small vessel disease was evaluated…

You should not be surprised by the irregularity of a newborn infant's sleep patterns but by the age of six months, if the baby is not sleeping through the night, many parents wonder if something is wrong with their baby or their sleeping arrangements. It helps parents to understand that "normal" sleep patterns for a child are somewhat broad, according to a new paper. According to the authors, there are four common areas of concern for both parents and practitioners: what constitutes "normal" infant sleep and waking patterns, whether nightwakings are a problem or not, is a parent's presence…

For some Medicare patients, the prognosis was better when cardiologists were away from the hospital attending national cardiology meetings. Anupam B. Jena, M.D., Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School, Boston, and coauthors analyzed differences in 30-day mortality and treatment such as angioplasty (also known as percutaneous coronary intervention, PCI) among Medicare patients hospitalized for heart attack (acute myocardial infarction, AMI), heart failure or cardiac arrest from 2002 to 2011 during the dates of two national cardiology meetings compared with identical non-meeting dates in the…