Volume 1 Issue 11, November 2021

The fact that women’s reproductive lifespans are finite affects many personal decisions and is accompanied by postmenopausal side effects. Expansion of the reproductive lifespan could therefore have many benefits. Findings from Zhang and colleagues indicate that manipulation of BIN2 extends the reproductive lifespan of female mice, and hold promise for therapeutic development.

What makes some human brains more resilient to aging than others? In an Article in Nature Aging, Chan et al. provide evidence that brain connectomes in older adults are altered by a college education — an environmental factor that might be an advantageous modulator of brain reserve during aging.

This Review provides an evidence-based update of the prevention and management of sarcopenia and proposes practical information to facilitate the disease’s adoption into routine care.

This study shows that dietary supplementation with B. adolescentis increases the activity of the catalase enzyme and improves the healthspan and lifespan in multiple animal models. Deletion of the catalase enzyme in worms abolished the beneficial effects of the bacterium.

In a sample of about 400 cognitively normal older adults, APOE ε4 genotype and β-amyloid pathology predicted better and poorer visual working memory, respectively, suggesting some benefits of ε4 in older age, even in the preclinical stages of Alzheimer’s disease.

The authors found that deleting an ovary-rich gene called Bin2 improved fertility and oocyte quality in mice. Inhibiting BIN2 with a cell-penetrating peptide improved ovarian function in aging and in chemotherapy-treated mice.

The authors demonstrate that release of peroxidated lipids from mouse neurons following ablation of the small GTPase ARF1 leads to activation of a neurotoxic microglial NLRP3 pathway and show that ARF1 is reduced in human brain tissue from patients with neurodegenerative diseases.

Integrative single-cell RNA sequencing and immunological profiling reveal that older adults have reduced antigen-specific cellular and humoral responses accompanied by increased cytokine storm and myeloid cell recruiting factors in response to acute SARS-CoV-2 infection.

A brain-imaging study in humans demonstrates that older age brain network decline varies in relation to an individual’s education and predicts future dementia severity beyond other markers of Alzheimer’s disease-related genetic risk and pathology.