Study of Longitudinal Aging in Mice

衰老是一个生物学过程，其特征在于时间依赖性功能下降，与已知减少健康寿命的许多身体和精神状况相关，包括能量代谢，慢性炎症，心血管功能障碍和心血管疾病以及神经元功能障碍（1）。在NIA，巴尔的摩老龄化纵向研究（BLSA）的目的是表征身体，功能和认知的变化，发生与衰老独立的疾病发展，以及疾病的机制，可以影响年龄相关的表型的出现和进展。到目前为止，证据还不足以说明小鼠是否可以作为一种模式生物，完全重现人类衰老过程中发生的相同生理变化。建立这样的等效性对于决定在小鼠中进行的研究是否可转化为人类衰老是很重要的（2）。因此，我们正在对小鼠进行广泛的纵向研究，以确定小鼠和人类中随衰老而变化的生物标志物，以及这两种生物体中预测疾病发作和生存的生物标志物。

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.