- Related Topics:
- human aging
- menopause
- old age
- middle age
- crow’s feet
Changes in body composition, metabolism, and activity
The lean body mass, consisting of the skeletal muscles and all other cellular tissues, decreases steadily after physical maturity until, in extreme old age, it may be reduced to two-thirds its value in young adults. Body weight, however, usually increases with age, because stored fat and body water increases in excess of the loss of lean body mass. The relative amount of extracellular fluid increases with age during adult life, after decreasing steadily throughout fetal and postnatal development. Despite appearances, therefore, all tissues, even the skin, become more laden with water as a consequence of aging. The steady loss of voluntary (striated) muscle tissue mass throughout adult life depends somewhat on the pattern of physical activity. Evidence indicates that a large part of the loss of muscle mass with age is the result of disuse and atrophy rather than loss of muscle fibres.
The decrease of lean body mass is accompanied by a decrease in the level of overall metabolic activity. Basal metabolism is greatest during the period of most rapid mass growth. It then declines rapidly until physical maturity is reached and more slowly thereafter. In the rat the slow phase of decrease amounts to about 20 percent over a three-year period. The interior body temperature is maintained, despite lower heat production, by decreased blood flow through the skin with a consequent decrease of heat loss. The “cooling of the blood” with age, therefore, does not occur in the degree that might be inferred from the decrease in skin temperature. The amount of voluntary physical activity, such as running in an exercise wheel, typically decreases with age but varies considerably between individual animals.
In humans, overall aging-related changes in metabolism that result in increased fat deposition and reduced muscle mass can lead to an increased likelihood of developing metabolic diseases such as type II diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia (elevated blood levels of lipids), arteriosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), and hypertension (high blood pressure). In some persons, these conditions may occur simultaneously, giving rise to a condition known as metabolic syndrome.
Also in humans, a substance known as ghrelin, which is produced and secreted mainly by the gastric mucosa and which stimulates food intake, decreases with age. Circulating ghrelin levels decline during aging because of impaired function of the gastric mucosa. This decline is thought to be related to the loss of appetite and anorexia often observed in aged subjects.
Changes in structural tissues
The structural integrity of the vertebrate organism depends on two kinds of fibrous protein molecules, collagen and elastin. Collagen, which constitutes almost one-third of the body protein, is found in skin, bone, and tendons. When first synthesized by cells called fibroblasts, collagen is in a fragile and soluble form (tropocollagen). In time this soluble collagen changes to a more stable, insoluble form that can persist in tissues for most of an animal’s life. The rate of collagen synthesis is high in youth and declines throughout life, so that the ratio of insoluble to soluble collagen increases with age. Insoluble collagen then builds up with age as a result of synthesis exceeding removal, much like another fibrous tissue, the crystalline lens of the eye. With increasing age, the number of cross-linkages within and between collagen molecules increases, leading to crystallinity and rigidity, which are reflected in a general body stiffness. There is also a decrease in the relative amount of a mucopolysaccharide (i.e., the combination of a protein and a carbohydrate) ground substance; a measure of this, the hexosamine–collagen ratio, has been investigated as an index of individual differences in the rate of aging. An important consequence of these changes is decreased permeability of the tissues to dissolved nutrients, hormones, and antibody molecules.
The rate of aging of collagen is related to the overall metabolic activity of the animal; rats kept on low-calorie diets have more youthful collagen than fully nourished rats of the same age.
Elastin is the molecule responsible for the elasticity of blood vessel walls. With age, progressive loss of elasticity of vessels occurs, presumably because of fragmentation of the elastin molecule.
The cross-linkage of collagen is chemically similar to the cross-linkages that occur in skins when they are tanned to leather. This similarity has stimulated proposals that chemicals that inhibit cross-linkage in tanning will retard aging.
Tissue cell loss and replacement
The tissues of the body fall into two groups, according to whether or not there is continuous renewal of tissue cells. At one extreme are nonrenewal tissues such as nerves and voluntary muscles, in which few new cells are formed (at least in mammals) after a certain stage of growth. In renewal tissues such as the intestinal epithelium and the blood, on the other hand, some cell types live only one or a few days and must be replaced hundreds of times in the life span of even a short-lived animal such as the rat. Between these limits lie many organs, such as liver, skin, and endocrine organs, that have cells that are replaced over periods ranging from a few weeks to several years in humans.
A peripheral nerve is a convenient object to study because the total number of fibres in the nerve trunk can be counted. This has been done for the cervical and thoracic spinal nerve roots of the rat, the cat, and humans. In the ventral and dorsal spinal roots of humans, the number of nerve fibres decreases about 20 percent from age 30 to age 90. In the cat, the rat, and the mouse, however, the data do not consistently indicate a decrease of number of spinal root fibres with age. In humans the number of olfactory nerve fibres, which serve the sense of smell, decreases by age 90 to about 25 percent of the number present at birth, and the number of optic nerve fibres, serving vision, decreases at a nearly comparable rate.
There is a striking decrease in the number of living cells in the cerebral cortex of the brain of humans with age. The cerebellar cortex of the rat and human is about as susceptible to age deterioration as is the cerebral cortex. Other parts of the brain are not so obviously marked by aging.
There is, in short, a tendency for the higher and more recently evolved levels of the nervous system to undergo more severe aging loss than do other regions, such as the brainstem and spinal cord. It is not yet known how much of the loss of brain cells results from conditions within the brain itself and how much results from extrinsic causes, such as deterioration of the blood circulation. The nutrition and maintenance of nerve cells, or neurons, in the central nervous system depends to a considerable extent on neuroglia, small cells that surround the neurons. The absolute number of these cells apparently does not decrease with age, but some of the microscopic changes seen in the neurons of old persons are similar to the changes produced by starvation or physical exhaustion.
It has been shown that after an attack of measles, the virus remains in the host’s body for the remainder of life and infrequently gives rise to a rapidly progressing degeneration of the cerebral cortex. This virus or other inapparent viruses may also be responsible for the individual differences in onset of senility in humans.
The renewal tissues are typically made up of a population of proliferative cells, which retain the capability for division, and a population of mature cells, produced by the proliferative cells and with limited life spans. The production of cells must balance the steady loss and also compensate quickly for unusual losses caused by injury or disease, so each renewal tissue has one or more channels of feedback control to adjust production to demand. Aging of renewal tissues is expressed in several ways, including decrease in the number of proliferative cells, decrease in the rate of cell division, and decrease in responsiveness to feedback signals. Changes of these factors in the blood-forming tissues of the mouse are small, yet the blood-forming tissues do suffer an aging deficit, for the ability to respond to extreme or repeated demand is significantly reduced in older mice.
The intact skin has a cell turnover time of several weeks, with the capability, shared by all renewal tissues, of temporarily increasing the rate of cell production by a large factor in response to injury. The rate of wound healing decreases with age, rapidly at first and more slowly as age increases.
One of the most regular and striking aging processes is the decrease in the ability to focus on both close and distant objects. This loss in visual accommodation is the result in part of a weakening of the ciliary muscle of the eye and of a decrease in the flexibility of the lens. A further contributing factor, however, is that the lens continues to grow throughout life at a rate that diminishes with age. This growth is the result of continuous division of epithelial cells near an imaginary midline of the lens, giving rise to fresh cells that differentiate into the precisely aligned lens fibres. Once formed, the fibres remain permanently in place.
An important feature of the renewal mechanism is the stem cell. These cells, which may normally continue to divide at a low rate throughout life, under conditions of increased demand enter a compensatory proliferative phase during which they divide rapidly. Blood-forming tissue has a stem cell population that responds to injury readily in youth, but its capacity diminishes with age. The increased incidence of anemia in old age and the reduced capacity to respond to blood loss have been attributed to depletion of the blood-forming stem cells. Stem cell populations have not been identified with certainty in other proliferative tissues. The intestinal mucosa, in particular, has a high cell-division rate without any clear indication of a reserve population of stem cells.
Mammalian cell cultures
Dividing cells from various mammalian tissues can be grown in vitro (outside the body) under careful laboratory control. Various lines of cancer cells have been grown in continuous culture for many decades. In the early period of tissue-culture technology it was claimed that certain chicken cells (fibroblasts) had been maintained in culture for 20 years. This led to the belief that dividing cells were potentially immortal and focused interest on nondividing cells as the seat of the aging process. However, it has since been established that a population (clone) of fibroblasts has a finite life history in culture. It has a period of healthy growth, during which it can be transferred, or “split,” several dozen times, indicating that the cells have undergone more than that number of generations. The cultures, however, go into a senescent phase and die out, usually before the 50th transfer. Occasionally, the chromosomes in a cell in the culture undergo a mutation (change) that results in a loss of a growth-limiting factor, leading to the establishment of a subclone capable of indefinite growth. This happens fairly often in cultures of mouse cell strains but only rarely in cultures of human cells. Such mutations usually involve chromosomal rearrangements or changes in the number of chromosomes.
Thus, dividing mammalian cells with a normal chromosomal complement have a limited growth potential. The capacity for indefinite growth shown by cancer cells and transformed cells is the result of the loss of a growth-limiting factor, such as the loss of control over cell life span normally exerted by telomeres. The number of transfers that cell strains can undergo decreases as the age of the donor increases, in a way reminiscent of the decreased turnover rate of fibroblasts in living chickens and of the decreased rate of wound healing with age.
Changes in tissue and cell morphology
There are numerous instances of tissue changes with age. The atrophy of tissues of moderate degree is usual. The shrinkage of the thymus is especially striking and important in view of its role in immunological defense. The diminution of cellular tissue and replacement by fatty or connective tissue is prominent in bone marrow and skin. In the kidney, entire secretory structures (nephrons) are lost. The secretory cells of the pancreas, thyroid, and similar organs decrease in numbers.
In addition, connective tissues change, becoming increasingly stiff. This makes the organs, blood vessels, and airways more rigid. Cell membranes also change, and many tissues become less efficient in exchanging carbon dioxide and other wastes for oxygen and nutrients. Some tissues may become nodular or more rigid.
An important age change is the accumulation of pigments and inert—possibly deleterious—materials within and between cells. The pigment lipofuscin accumulates within cells of the heart, brain, eye, and other tissues. In humans it is not detectable at a young age, but particularly in the heart it increases to make up a small percentage of the cell volume by old age. Amyloid, an insoluble protein-carbohydrate complex, increases in tissues as a result of aging. It is presumably a product of autoimmune reactions, immune reactions misdirected against the organism itself. In an extreme case of a rare autoimmune disease, amyloidosis, particular organs are virtually choked with amyloid substance.
Trace metals also accumulate in various tissues with age, and, although the amounts are very small, certain metals can poison enzyme systems and stimulate mutations, which may lead to cancer.
Aging at the molecular and cellular levels
Aging of genetic information systems
The physical basis of aging is either the cumulative loss and disorganization of important large molecules (e.g., proteins and nucleic acids) of the body or the accumulation of abnormal products in cells or tissues. A major effort in aging research has been focused on two objectives: to characterize the molecular disruptions of aging and to determine if one particular kind is primarily responsible for the observed rate and course of senescence; and to identify the chemical or physical reactions responsible for the age-related degradation of large molecules that have either informational or structural roles.
The working molecules of the body, such as enzymes and contractile proteins, which have short turnover times, are not thought to be sites of primary aging damage. Rather, the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules of the chromosomes appear to be potential sites of primary damage, because damage to DNA corrupts the genetic message on which the development and function of the organism depend. Damage at a single point in the DNA molecule can be followed by the synthesis of an incorrect protein molecule, which may result in the malfunction or death of the host cell or even of the entire organism. Attention therefore has been given to the somatic mutation hypothesis, which asserts that aging is the result of an accumulation of mutations in the DNA of somatic (body) cells. Aneuploidy, the occurrence of cells with more or less than the correct (euploid) complement of chromosomes, is especially common. The frequency of aneuploid cells in human females increases from 3 percent at age 10 to 13 percent at age 70. Each DNA molecule consists of two complementary strands coiled around each other in a double helix configuration. Evidence indicates that breaks of the individual strands occur with a higher frequency than was once suspected and that virtually all such breaks are repaired by an enzymatic mechanism that destroys the damaged region and then resynthesizes the excised portion, using the corresponding segment of the complementary strand as a model. The mutation rate for a species is therefore governed more by the competence of its repair mechanism than by the rate at which breaks occur. This may help to explain why the mutation rates of different species are roughly proportional to their generation times and justifies research to determine whether the enzymatic mechanisms involved are accessible to control.
There are, however, serious objections to the somatic mutation theory. The wasp Habrobracon is an insect that reproduces parthenogenetically (i.e., without the need of sperm to fertilize the egg). It is possible to obtain individuals with either a diploid, or paired, set of chromosomes, as in most higher organisms, or a haploid, single, set. Any gene mutation in a haploid cell at an essential position would result in loss of a vital process and impairment or death of the cell. In a diploid cell a serious mutation is often compensated for by the complementary gene and the cell can carry on its vital functions. Experiments have shown that haploid wasps live about as long as diploids, implying either that mutations are not a quantitatively important factor in aging or that parthenogenetic species have compensated for the vulnerability of their haploids by developing an increased effectiveness of DNA repair.
Chromosomes can be separated into DNA and protein molecules, but with increasing difficulty in older cells. The isolated DNA of old animals, however, does not differ from that of the young. Although most of the DNA in a given cell at a given time is repressed (i.e., blocked from functioning), it is more repressed in old animals.
Aging of the immune system
Another important molecular information system of the body is the immune system, part of which, the thymus-dependent subsystem, is specialized for defense against invading microorganisms and for detecting and removing body cells that have changed in such ways that they are no longer recognized by the body as part of its own substance, leading to the autoimmune reactions mentioned above. The immune system has been implicated in the body’s defenses against cancer. Cancerous growths (neoplasms) are thought to arise from single cells that undergo a drastic transformation as a result of either a genetic mutation or the activation of a latent (hidden) virus that may have been transmitted genetically from parent to offspring. The control of cancer susceptibility by genetically governed defense mechanisms has been indicated by the breeding of high and low cancer susceptibility in mice. There is a growing body of evidence that the thymus-dependent immune system is instrumental in repressing the development of cancer.
One piece of evidence is that the immunosuppressive procedures of organ transplantation are often followed by a greatly increased incidence of neoplasms. The thymus-dependent system can itself, however, give rise to age-related autoimmune disease, in which the immune system perceives normal body tissue as foreign and attacks it with antibodies. The initial step in these diseases is considered to be a somatic mutation in a single cell of the immune system. Such considerations are the basis of several immune theories of aging, which seek to explain the phenomena of senescence in terms of mutations in the immune system.
Aging of neural and endocrine systems
Aging of the brain entails both degeneration and neuroplasticity. Neurons atrophy and die, and blood flow to the brain decreases. The latter can result in reduced oxygen delivery to tissues, including the eyes and brain. The ability of the eye to dark-adapt (i.e., increase its sensitivity at low light levels) decreases with age, but part of that decrease can be restored by breathing pure oxygen. Various mental processes in elderly people are also found to be improved by breathing oxygen. The establishment of a memory trace (connections in the brain that are associated with memory) involves the synthesis of protein. Any slowed induction of protein synthesis, as from lower oxygen intake, with age could be a factor in the deficits of learning and memory in the elderly. At the same time that neurons are degenerating, however, the aging brain also forms new synapses (connections between neurons), which helps to compensate for the neuronal loss.
A general characteristic of aging of the endocrine system is that the cells that once responded vigorously to hormones become less responsive. A normal chemical in cells, cyclic adenosine monophosphate (AMP), is thought to be a transmitter of hormonal information across cell membranes. It may be possible to identify the specific sites in the membrane or the cell interior at which communication breaks down.
Because the pituitary gland connects the nervous and endocrine systems, its aging affects both systems. In the pituitary, aging attenuates the response of the gland to growth hormone-releasing hormone. This in turn causes a decrease in the release of growth hormone, which subsequently affects the overall rate and efficiency of metabolic processes.
