Age-related diseases: common or diverse pathways?

Abstract

First of all, we dedicate this special issue of Biogerontology to Professor Brian F. C. Clark, Ph.D., Sc.D., in honor and memory of his tremendous support and promotion of aging research in Europe and across the globe. Brian Clark was instrumental in the establishment of several initiatives in Denmark and other countries towards basic biogerontology and translational research across aging and age-related diseases. The recognition that aging is a major risk factor for the late-onset forms of cancer, neurodegenerative disorders, diabetes, and other age-related diseases (ARDs) has stimulated an extensive search for a common molecular basis underlying the origin and propagation of these pathologies. Along with the discovery of several common processes, such as metabolic reprogramming and cellular senescence, emerging evidence indicates that these processes could also diverge at some point, leading to one pathology or another. An important example of convergence and commonality is an inverse association of cancer with age-related neurodegenerative disorders. This inverse co-morbidity suggests a metabolic basis for the late-onset forms of cancer and neurogenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The authors of this special issue have reviewed different aspects of the links between ARDs, and between ARDs and basic mechanisms of aging, from the genetic (‘‘nuclear-genomic’’) and/or metabolic (‘‘bioenergetic’’) perspectives. Jane Driver, one of the pioneers in the statistical analysis of epidemiological data on ARDs, gives a concise evaluation of the biological and epidemiological evidence (Driver 2014). As stressed in the paper, an investigation of the relation between cancer and neurodegenerative disorders requires a careful analysis of the non-biological factors which may corrupt the data and disturb the analysis. Such an analysis requires a sophisticated statistical methodology which can distinguish between biological and the non-biological factors. Driver’s review achieves this distinction. The analysis thus succeeds in evaluating the significance of the relation between late-onset forms of cancer and Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s diseases, but also between cancer and the less-common neurodegenerative disorders such as Huntington’s diseases, schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis—disorders where non-biological L. Demetrius (&) Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02135, USA e-mail: ldemetr@oeb.harvard.edu