Summary
David Furman describes the effect inflammation has on the aging process. Inflammaging – chronic inflammation which occurs as we age – takes center stage at the nexus of age related pathologies. A collaborative effort between the Buck Institute and Stanford reveals how inflammation can be measured and correlated with things like multimorbidity, aging, frailty, and all-cause mortality. Old biomarkers such as hsCRP are unreliable – interest has instead shifted to IL-1b and CXCL9.
Presenters
- Systems immunology of aging to enable position preventative medicine
- There is tremendous variability in aging.
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Systemic chronic inflammation is the hub of aging – it triggers all 9 hallmarks of aging. Inflammation appears to be linked with other types of diseases such as type 2 diabetes and metabolic disorders.
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Age and infection are intertwined.
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Systems immunology at Stanford includes a clinical team, bioinformatics, immunological expertise, and novel technology. The goal is to generate new models and new therapeutics.
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Multimorbidity is the highest priority for global health research. It is estimated that the annual cost in the US is $3.5 Trillion.
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Acute and chronic inflammation have different underlying mechanisms. One key feature of chronic inflammation is the lack of canonical standard biomarkers.
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hsCRP, a biomarker of chronic inflammation, is not a good predictor of aging or cardiovascular disease.
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IL-1b is a better biomarker for sterile (chronic) inflammation.
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Inflammasome gene modules are elevated in older adults and link hypertension, arterial stiffness, and longevity.
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A neural network was used to analyze cytokines for association with aging.
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Inflammatory age can predict multimorbidity.
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Although there is a lot of variability, it appears inflammatory age plays a role in achieving centenarian status.
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Looking at the Jak-Stat pathway, inflammatory age level was correlated with poor immune responses across the board.
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Inflammatory age predicts frailty 7 years in advance.
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Gene expression inflammatory age predicts all-cause mortality.
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The chemokine CXCL9 is heavily correlated with inflammatory age and endothelial cell aging.
Seminar summary by Aaron King.