Study of Longitudinal Aging in Mice

衰老是一个以时间依赖性功能衰退为特征的生物学过程，它与许多已知会降低健康寿命的身心状况有关，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，巴尔的摩衰老纵向研究（BLSA）旨在描述与疾病发展无关的随年龄增长而发生的身体、功能和认知变化，以及疾病影响年龄相关表型出现和进展的机制。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，完全再现人类衰老过程中发生的相同生理变化。建立这种等效性对于确定在小鼠中进行的研究是否可用于人类衰老至关重要(2)。因此，我们正在对小鼠进行广泛的纵向研究，以确定那些在小鼠和人类中随年龄变化的生物标志物，以及那些在两种生物体中预测疾病发病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.