Pathophysiology of ageing, longevity and age related diseases

Alexander Bürkle,Jacek M Witkowski,Graziella Caselli,Paolo Sansoni,Giancarlo Vecchio,Claudio Franceschi,Erminia Mariani,Angela Santoni,Calogero Caruso

doi:10.1186/1742-4933-4-4

Abstract

On April 18, 2007 an international meeting on Pathophysiology of Ageing, Longevity and Age-Related Diseases was held in Palermo, Italy. Several interesting topics on Cancer, Immunosenescence, Age-related inflammatory diseases and longevity were discussed. In this report we summarize the most important issues. However, ageing must be considered an unavoidable end point of the life history of each individual, nevertheless the increasing knowledge on ageing mechanisms, allows envisaging many different strategies to cope with, and delay it. So, a better understanding of pathophysiology of ageing and age-related disease is essential for giving everybody a reasonable chance for living a long and enjoyable final part of the life.

Highlights

On April 18, 2007 an international meeting on Pathophysiology of Ageing, Longevity and Age-Related Diseases was held in Palermo, Italy
It has been suggested that chronic viral antigenic stimulation could be responsible of age-related modifications of lymphocyte subsets including clonal expansion of viral antigen-specific CD8+ T cells expressing a memory phenotype and that can represent up to a quarter of the whole CD8+ T cell population [13]
The majority of CMV-specific CD8+ (IFN-γ+) and 25% of CD4+ (IFN-γ+) expressed the cytotoxic degranulation marker CD107a (Sansoni et al, paper submitted). These data support the view that chronic CMV infection is responsible for profound modifications of the lymphocyte subsets involving CD8+ and CD4+ T cells and probably concurring to the age-dependent proinflammatory status that accompanies the main of age-associated diseases

Summary

Introduction

On April 18, 2007 an international meeting on Pathophysiology of Ageing, Longevity and Age-Related Diseases was held in Palermo, Italy. Immunity & Ageing 2007, 4:4 http://www.immunityageing.com/content/4/1/4 has been suggested that the inflammatory cells and cytokines found in tumours are more likely to contribute to tumour growth and progression [2].

Results

Conclusion