Study of Longitudinal Aging in Mice

National Institute On Aging

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Abstract

Aging is a biological process characterized by time-dependent functional declines that have been associated with a number of physical and mental conditions known to reduce healthspan, including energetic metabolism, chronic inflammation, cardiovascular dysfunction and cardiovascular diseases as well as neuronal dysfunction (1). At NIA, the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of aging (BLSA) is aimed at characterizing physical, functional and cognitive changes that occur with aging independent of disease development as well as the mechanisms by which disease can affect the emergence and progression of age-related phenotypes. To date, the evidence is insufficient to tell whether mice can be used as a model organism that fully recapitulates the same physiological changes that occur in human aging. Establishing such equivalence is important to decide whether research conducted in mouse is translatable to human aging (2). Thus, we are performing an extensive longitudinal study in mice to identify those biomarkers that change with aging both in mice and in humans and those that in both organisms predict disease onset and survival. An initial cross species comparison between mice, non-human primates (NHPs), and humans demonstrated the similarities and differences between age related changes common metabolic parameters (body weight, body fat, and fasted blood glucose). This work demonstrated that contrary to what is seen in humans and NHPs, blood glucose values go down with age in mice and maintaining higher blood glucose values late in life was associated with reduced mortality risk.