Markers Of Successful Aging Research Articles

Aging and Bone Metabolism.

Changes in bone architecture and metabolism with aging increase the likelihood of osteoporosis and fracture. Age-onset osteoporosis is multifactorial, with contributory extrinsic and intrinsic factors including certain medical problems, specific prescription drugs, estrogen loss, secondary hyperparathyroidism, microenvironmental and cellular alterations in bone tissue, and mechanical unloading or immobilization. At the histological level, there are changes in trabecular and cortical bone as well as marrow cellularity, lineage switching of mesenchymal stem cells to an adipogenic fate, inadequate transduction of signals during skeletal loading, and predisposition toward senescent cell accumulation with production of a senescence-associated secretory phenotype. Cumulatively, these changes result in bone remodeling abnormalities that over time cause net bone loss typically seen in older adults. Age-related osteoporosis is a geriatric syndrome due to the multiple etiologies that converge upon the skeleton to produce the ultimate phenotypic changes that manifest as bone fragility. Bone tissue is dynamic but with tendencies toward poor osteoblastic bone formation and relative osteoclastic bone resorption with aging. Interactions with other aging physiologic systems, such as muscle, may also confer detrimental effects on the aging skeleton. Conversely, individuals who maintain their BMD experience a lower risk of fractures, disability, and mortality, suggesting that this phenotype may be a marker of successful aging. © 2023 American Physiological Society. Compr Physiol 13:4355-4386, 2023.

Novel Approaches Examining Sleep Health as a Marker of Successful Aging

Sleep is a modifiable determinant of health. It changes with advancing age and in response to diverse contexts (e.g., related to work or one’s health). Previous studies have often used single measures of sleep duration or sleep quality. However, a recent paradigmatic shift towards multidimensional sleep health emphasizes the importance of examining how multiple sleep measures are simultaneously associated with health. This approach presents many opportunities for understanding sleep phenotypes and their potential contributions to health. Yet it also presents methodological challenges in analyzing multidimensional sleep data. This symposium showcases the most recent approaches and novel ideas examining the role of sleep health in successful aging. Paper 1 examines sleep profiles (i.e., latent groups with varying sleep characteristics) in middle-aged adults and their linkages to psychological well-being and chronic conditions with differences by age groups. Paper 2 investigates 24-hour patterns of sleep-activity rhythms and their associations with physical functioning performance in older men and women. Paper 3 showcases the utility of a sleep health composite score in examining sleep disparities and their drivers in middle- and later-adulthood. Paper 4 examines whether and how a composite sleep health measure based on actigraphy data is associated with specific characteristics of adult bipolar disorder patients. These papers use different cohorts, such as the Midlife in the United States Study, Osteoporotic Fractures in Men study, and Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis. At the end, Dr. Wallace will discuss key findings from these studies, their methodological contributions and implications for aging, and directions for future research.

Renovate my uterus: Aging queerly through performance art and karaoke

Intimate Karaoke, Live at Uterine Concert Hall (IK-UCH) is a performance-based sound installation that examines vulnerability and shared intimacy through the site of my body by inviting audiences to sing their favourite karaoke song into my uterus while other audience members listen via stethoscope through my flesh. This article uses this project as a case study to examine the queering of the uterus as a site of production (not reproduction) and recoups the perceived uselessness of my middle-aging queer female body. This work connects to Linn Sandberg and Barbara Marshall's critique of the “problematic ways that aging and imagined futures are intertwined with heteronormativity in contemporary Western cultures” and how “some aging bodies and subjectivities are understood as desirable and taken-for-granted while others are constructed as unwanted and problematic” in their article, “Queering Aging Futures” (2). To make the body, vagina, cervix, and uterus structural materials for a venue is to renovate their functions outside of the logics of cisheteropatriarchy and reproductive futurity and further trouble mainstream perceptions of aging. I challenge heterocentric human reproduction as a marker of successful aging and as evidence of ‘living a good life’ by presenting queer feminist performance-based practices that centre my nonreproductive body as site for art production, presentation, and consumption.

Frailty Status Typologies in Spanish Older Population: Associations with Successful Aging.

Background: Defining frailty typologies would contribute to guiding specific care interventions. These typologies could additionally be related to different health outcomes. This study aims at identifying subgroups of frail older adults based on the physical frailty phenotype and examining the relationships of these frailty profiles with quality of life and perceived health. Methods: This study relies on data from the SHARE project, namely a representative sample of 1765 Spanish-dwelling older adults identified as frail or pre-frail. Analysis included general descriptive statistics, exploratory latent class analysis (LCA) to determine the number of frailty subgroups, and LCA with covariates to examine differential relationships with markers of successful aging. Results: Statistical criteria and interpretability of the classes suggested that the LCA model with four classes should be retained. Class 1 was identified as the “frail people” group, Class 2 “activity problems” group, Class 3 “fatigued” group, and those belonging to Class 4 “lack of strength” group. Final LCA with covariates showed lower levels of quality of life and perceived health of the “frail” as compared to other frailty subgroups. Conclusion: This study revealed four different patterns of frailty attributes and further offered evidence on individuals’ differential status of health regarding distinct frailty conditions.

SMART LIFE, FITNESS, WELLNESS, AND THE PROMISE OF DIGITAL HEALTH TECHNOLOGIES FOR OLDER PEOPLE

Based on the author’s ethnographic observation and collection of product media kits, videos, and photographs from the Consumer Electronics Show 2019, this paper critiques the ways in which positive lifestyle concepts such as ‘smart life’, ‘fitness’ and ‘wellness’ are designed within products aimed at senior marketing to shape the older consumers as composites of health problems open to technological intervention. However helpful sensor clothing, home surveillance cameras, self-tracking appliances, robotic companions, or digital mobility devices may be, they are also opportunities to capitalize on shared personal data and subscription-based monitoring services. Discussion links these concepts to wider concerns about algorithimic standardization of health risks for older people, healthcare austerity programs, and social inequalities based on technical markers of successful aging and privileged life-course trajectories

Motives to practice exercise in old age and successful aging: A latent class analysis

PurposeThe aim was to classify motives for exercising trying to find sets of related cases that share common motivations, and to relate these latent classes to markers of successful aging. Methods725 old adult aged 55 to 97 years were sampled in several Spanish towns. Instruments: Successful Aging Inventory (SAI), International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ), Health Survey SF-8, Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS), and motives to practice exercise, were used. Latent Class Analyses (LCAs) were estimated. The classes obtained were compared on markers of successful aging. ResultsThree latent classes were deemed optimal. Significant differences for several markers of successful aging were found. ConclusionA main conclusion derived from the results is that not all old people do exercise for the same motives, and the class of motives you are in had an impact/relation on markers of successful aging. Motives related to internal rather than external pressures should be promoted in the old age.

Subjective Age and Dementia

ABSTRACTObjective: Existing evidence indicates that a younger subjective age is a marker of successful aging, including better health and cognition. Building upon this evidence, it is likely that individuals with dementia might feel older. However, subjective evaluation of age might not be affected by dementia because these individuals tend to be anosognosic and report positive health-related quality of life.Methods: Data from two cross-sectional samples from France and the United States were used to compare the subjective age ratings of individuals with and without dementia.Results: Results from both samples revealed that individuals with dementia felt younger than their age but did not differ from the controls, even after controlling for sex, chronological age, education, and self-rated health.Conclusion: The present study suggests that there are no large differences in the subjective experience of age between healthy individuals and those with dementia.

The impact of connectivity for the older patient

The impact of connectivity for the older patient

Cystatin C, a marker for successful aging and glomerular filtration rate, is not influenced by inflammation

Background. The plasma level of cystatin C is a better marker than plasma creatinine for successful aging. It has been assumed that the advantage of cystatin C is not only due to it being a better marker for glomerular filtration rate (GFR) than creatinine, but also because an inflammatory state of a patient induces a raised cystatin C level. However, the observations of an association between cystatin C level and inflammation stem from large cohort studies. The present work concerns the cystatin C levels and degree of inflammation in longitudinal studies of individual subjects without inflammation, who undergo elective surgery. Methods. Cystatin C, creatinine, and the inflammatory markers CRP, serum amyloid A (SAA), haptoglobin and orosomucoid were measured in plasma samples from 35 patients the day before elective surgery and subsequently during seven consecutive days. Results. Twenty patients had CRP-levels below 1 mg/L before surgery and low levels of the additional inflammatory markers. Surgery caused marked inflammation with high peak values of CRP and SAA on the second day after the operation. The cystatin C level did not change significantly during the observation period and did not correlate significantly with the level of any of the four inflammatory markers. The creatinine level was significantly reduced on the first postoperative day but reached the preoperative level towards the end of the observation period. Conclusion. The inflammatory status of a patient does not influence the role of cystatin C as a marker of successful aging, nor of GFR.

Successful Skeletal Aging: A Marker of Low Fracture Risk and Longevity. The Study of Osteoporotic Fractures (SOF)

Successful aging is multidimensional, and many phenotypes have been proposed. We examined a biomarker of aging based on repeated measures of BMD for up to 15 yr and hypothesized that maintenance of BMD will be associated with low fracture risk and disability and improved survival. We studied 9704 women recruited at four U.S. clinical centers and enrolled in the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures, a longitudinal cohort study. Of these, 8224 women had at least one hip BMD measurement. Hip BMD was measured a maximum of five times over 15 yr. Random effects regression was used to determine a BMD slope for each subject. Three groups were formed-"maintained" BMD: slope >or=0, n = 724 (9%); "expected" BMD loss: slope <0 to <1 SD below mean, n = 6478 (79%); and "accelerated" BMD loss: slope >or=1 SD below mean, n = 1022 (12%). Cox proportional hazards models were used to compare the relative hazard (RH; 95% CI) of fracture, incident mobility disability, and mortality in the maintained and accelerated groups compared with the expected. A 1 SD decrease in the BMD slope was associated with an increased risk of all outcomes. In multivariate models, the RH of nonspine fracture was 0.81 (0.71-0.93) and of hip fracture was 0.36 (0.25-0.53) for women in the maintained compared with the expected group. The incidence of mobility disability was lower in the maintained versus expected group (RH = 0.70; 95% CI = 0.59-0.83), but this was largely explained by other factors. Women who experienced accelerated bone loss were more likely to develop disability (RH = 1.56; 95% CI: 1.33-1.84). Mortality risks were lower in the maintained compared with the expected group (RH = 0.49; 95% CI: 0.42-0.58). In conclusion, a subset of older women maintained their BMD up to 15 yr, suggesting that bone loss is not an inevitable consequence of aging. These women experienced a lower risk of fractures, disability, and mortality, suggesting that this phenotype may be a marker of successful aging.

Religion as Moderator of the Sense of Control–Health Connection: Gender Differences

ABSTRACT Objectives. Sense of personal control is a key marker of successful aging, yet little is known about its relation to religiousness and personal adversity among older adults. This study investigated the relation between two different religious orientations, a church-centered religiousness and a non-church-based spiritual seeking, sense of control, physical health, and gender in late adulthood. Methods. The participants consisted of a community sample of men and women (N = 156) in their late sixties and mid-seventies who were born in the San Francisco Bay Area. Three-way ANOVAs were used to test in separate analyses, the effects of religiousness and spiritual seeking on sense of control among men and women who were either in good or poor physical health. Results. Both religiousness and spiritual seeking buffered women, but not men, against loss of sense of control due to poor physical health. The buffering effect of religiousness and spiritual seeking was associated with different psychological characteristics: high life satisfaction for religiousness and engagement in life review for spiritual seeking. For men, the absence of a buffering effect of either religiousness or spiritual seeking was associated with disengagement from involvement in daily activities. Discussion. Our findings highlight (1) the importance of employing multidimensional models of religion in studying its effect on psychosocial functioning in late adulthood and (2) the possibility that men and women who are high in religiousness and spiritual seeking regulate their sense of control using different adaptive strategies.

Looking for immunological risk genotypes.

Several functional markers of the immune system may be used either as markers of successful aging or conversely as markers of unsuccessful aging. Particularly, a combination of high CD8 and low CD4 and poor T cell proliferation has been associated with a higher two-year mortality in very old subjects. Therefore, genetic determinants of longevity should reside in those polymorphisms for the immune system genes that regulate immune responses. Concerning these changes in T cell subpopulations, how much they depend on the immunogenetic background and how much they depend on individual antigenic load, such as chronic infections, should be assessed. As previously demonstrated in our population, the interleukin (IL)-2 high-producer genotype is less frequent in old men than in young people; conversely, the IL-10 high-producer genotype is increased in old men. In this study, we tried to assess the role of low- and high-producer genotypes for IL-10 and IL-2 in the CD4 and CD8 absolute values, taking into account gender and age. The results suggest that old men carrying an anti-inflammatory IL-10 high-producer genotype or a proinflammatory IL-2 low-producer genotype show the lowest values of CD8 cells. Although in our study we were not able to show any correlation with CD4 values and no functional assessment of T cell was performed, these results suggest that cytokine genotypes may be involved in the subpopulation dynamics in old age.

Anti malondialdehyde-adduct immunological response as a possible marker of successful aging

Contrasting results have been obtained by various researchers about oxidative markers of aging. In this study, a healthy over-90-year-old population was examined for various plasma oxidative biomarkers and compared with a healthy population of blood donors (age range 23–66). Plasma malondialdehyde (MDA), evaluated by means of the thiobarbituric acid test, was significantly higher in the over-90-year-old population, confirming the presence of increased lipoperoxidation in old age. The antibody titre against MDA-protein adducts, considered a marker of lipoperoxidative protein damage in vivo, was evaluated in an ELISA test, completely home made and calibrated versus a concentrated pool of human plasma; this antibody titre was significantly higher in the over-90-year-old population. Plasma vitamin E, evaluated in RP-HPLC, was not significantly different between the two groups. Plasma protein-bound carbonyls, a marker of oxidative protein damage, were measured with the 2,4-dinitrophenylhydrazine assay; their level in the over-90-year-old population was lower than in the blood donors. The higher antibody titre against MDA-adducts may result in protection against accumulation of oxidatively damaged proteins by enhancing their removal, and, together with the preserved plasma vitamin E level, it may endow over-90-year-olds with an especially efficient antioxidant profile. The low level of protein carbonyl might reflect the more efficient removal of damaged proteins.

Markers of Successful Aging Among Vietnamese Refugee Women

This article describes several markers of successful aging for Vietnamese women. These studies suggest that feelings of control have important implications for life satisfaction and mental health of female Vietnamese refugees. Adequate satisfaction with social relationships is a key contributor to successful aging and mental health of elderly Vietnamese refugees who are female. The article concludes by discussing ways in which mental health and health care professionals can assist female elderly refugees cope with family crisis, adaptation, and acculturation issues because they are at the highest risk now and into the future. Key issues were: cultural values surrounding age and gender norms, differential rates of acculturation across generations in the family, cross-cultural differences in mental health and their therapeutic implications.