Category Health/Medical

University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have discovered a key driver of chronic inflammation that accelerates aging, a finding that could lead to longer, healthier lives and the possible prevention of age-related conditions such as deadly heart disease and devastating brain disorders.

The harmful inflammation is driven by improper calcium signaling in the mitochondria of certain immune cells, researchers found. Mitochondria are the power generators in all cells, and they rely heavily on calcium signaling.

The UVA Health res...

Research led by the Center for Biomedical Technology, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain, has compared the brains of superagers with those of normal cognitive aged abilities in a paper, “Brain structure and phenotypic profile of superagers compared with age-matched older adults: a longitudinal analysis from the Vallecas Project,” published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity. A Comment published in the same journal issue discusses the work by the team.

Episodic memory, the memory of personal life experiences, is vulnerable to age-related deterioration. Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s often lead to severe episodic memory decline.

Some older adults, called superagers, somehow resist age-related memory decline, maintaining episodic memory comparable to healthy indivi...

Whether enjoyed on its own or mixed into a latte, Americano or even a martini, espresso provides an ultra-concentrated jolt of caffeine to coffee lovers. But it might do more than just wake you up. Research now published in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry shows that, in preliminary in vitro laboratory tests, espresso compounds can inhibit tau protein aggregation — a process that is believed to be involved in the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

Roughly half of all Americans drink coffee every day, and espresso is a popular way to consume it...

Long-running research by Duke-NUS Medical School into the omega-3 transporter protein Mfsd2a has shown that it plays a key role in a specific mechanism that prevents the liver from storing too much fat from food. Published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, this latest study by Duke-NUS and collaborators from Singapore General Hospital (SGH) signals the possibility that a dietary supplement could be developed to help prevent non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

Eating too much fatty food increases the risk of many health problems, including cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes and NAFLD...