First actionable clock that predicts immunological health and chronic diseases of aging

Research highlights the critical role of the immune system in the aging process

2021-07-12

(Press-News.org) Researchers from the Buck Institute and Stanford University have created an inflammatory clock of aging (iAge) which measures inflammatory load and predicts multi-morbidity, frailty, immune health, cardiovascular aging and is also associated with exceptional longevity in centenarians. Utilizing deep learning, a form of AI, in studies of the blood immunome of 1001 people, researchers also identified a modifiable chemokine associated with cardiac aging which can be used for early detection of age-related pathology and provides a target for interventions. Results are published in Nature Aging.

"Standard immune metrics which can be used to identify individuals most at risk for developing single or even multiple chronic diseases of aging have been sorely lacking," said END

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Coastal ecosystems worldwide: Billion-dollar carbon reservoirs

2021-07-12

According to the study, Australia, Indonesia and the USA provide the largest carbon storage potential with their coastal ecosystems. The team also calculated which countries benefit most from the coastal CO2 uptake worldwide. The different ways in which countries are affected by climate change are quantified by using the so-called social costs of carbon. "If we take into account the differences in marginal climate damages that occur in each country, we find that Australia and Indonesia are clearly the largest donors in terms of globally avoided climate damages originating from coastal CO2 uptake, as they themselves derive comparatively little benefit ...

Haziness of exoplanet atmospheres depends on properties of aerosol particles

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Many exoplanets have opaque atmospheres, obscured by clouds or hazes that make it hard for astronomers to characterize their chemical compositions. A new study shows that haze particles produced under different conditions have a wide range of properties that can determine how clear or hazy a planet's atmosphere is likely to be. Photochemical reactions in the atmospheres of temperate exoplanets lead to the formation of small organic haze particles. Large amounts of these photochemical hazes form in Earth's atmosphere every day, yet our planet has relatively clear skies. The reason has to do with how ...

A fermented-food diet increases microbiome diversity and lowers inflammation, study finds

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Immune system 'clock' predicts illness and mortality

2021-07-12

You're as old as your immune system. Investigators at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the Buck Institute for Research on Aging have built an inflammatory-aging clock that's more accurate than the number of candles on your birthday cake in predicting how strong your immune system is, how soon you'll become frail or whether you have unseen cardiovascular problems that could become clinical headaches a few years down the road. In the process, the scientists fingered a bloodborne substance whose abundance may accelerate cardiovascular aging. The story of the clock's creation will be published July 12 in Nature Aging. "Every year, the calendar tells us we're a year older," said David ...

Human environmental genome recovered in the absence of skeletal remains

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The cave of Satsurblia was inhabited by humans in different periods of the Paleolithic: Up to date a single human individual dated from 15,000 years ago has been sequenced from that site. No other human remains have been discovered in the older layers of the cave. The innovative approach used by the international team led by Prof. Ron Pinhasi and Pere Gelabert with Susanna Sawyer of the University of Vienna in collaboration with Pontus Skoglund and Anders Bergström of the Francis Crick Institute in London permits the identification of DNA in samples of environmental ...

Progress towards new treatments for tuberculosis

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Naturally abundant venom peptide from ants can activate a pseudo allergic pathway unravelling a novel immunomodulatory pathway of MRGPRX2

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Ants are omnipresent, and we often get blisters after an ant bite. But do you know the molecular mechanism behind it? A research team led by Professor Billy K C CHOW from the Research Division for Molecular and Cell Biology, Faculty of Science, the University of Hong Kong (HKU), in collaboration with Dr Jerome LEPRINCE from The Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale (INSERM) and Professor Michel TREILHOU from the Institut National Universitaire Champollion in France, have identified and demonstrated a novel small peptide isolated from the ant venom can initiate an immune pathway via a pseudo-allergic receptor MRGPRX2. The study ...

Sea-level rise may worsen existing Bay Area inequities

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People given 'friendly' bacteria in nose drops protected against meningitis

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Led by Professor Robert Read and Dr Jay Laver from the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre and the University of Southampton, the work is the first of its kind. Together they inserted a gene into a harmless type of a bacteria, that allows it to remain in the nose and trigger an immune response. They then introduced these bacteria into the noses of healthy volunteers via nose drops. The results, published in the journal Science Translational Medicine, showed a strong immune response against bacteria that cause meningitis. Published in ...

Hijacked immune activator promotes growth and spread of colorectal cancer

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Inhibition of cyclooxygenase-2 upregulates the nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 signaling pathway to mitigate hepatocyte ferroptosis in chronic liver injury

First actionable clock that predicts immunological health and chronic diseases of aging

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