INFLAMMAGING FINALLY BEING RECOGNIZED BY MEDICAL MAINSTREAM

INFLAMMAGING BEING RECOGNIZED BY MEDICAL MAINSTREAM. Researchers point to inflammation-related conditions as the cause of roughly 50 percent of all deaths worldwide.

Italian scientist Claudio Franceschi coined the term “inflammaging” over a decade ago to describe the acceleration of aging due to chronic overactivation of our own immune systems. Inflammation is the term for an immune response to some sort of injury or invasion. When our immune systems overreact to normal minor imperfections in our bodies, however, the results can be counterproductive and even lethal. (There’s a political/societal metaphor here but I’ll leave it to the reader to make.)

Depending on a person’s genes and experiences, the immune system may focus on one problem area, simultaneously trying to kill it and cure it. This creates the conditions that lead to all the various diseases of aging. Several new journal articles reflect the medical establishment’s acceptance of this view, one in Nature Medicine described in this UPI story titled, “Physicians urge greater focus on role of chronic inflammation in overall health.”

Medical attitudes lag the science by at least a decade but it is a very good thing that doctors are recognizing autoimmunity as an important target for slowing population aging and preventing age-related diseases. It appears to me, based on conversations with several important researchers, that announcements will be made this year revealing that immunometabolic dysfunctions can be treated much more easily than previously believed. Breakthroughs in this area will, I believe, be the first step toward the biological Singularity; human healthspans rapidly moving toward the asymptotic.