Aging | featured news

A report in Nature Neuroscience suggests that natural physical changes interfere with quality slumber, blunting the ability to remember new information for the long term.

Growing old is not for sissies, as the bumper sticker says, and as anyone who has entered midlife can attest. But a new study finds that despite the physical and mental toll of time, people actually feel better as they age -- not worse.

For some, wrinkles are seen as a sign of character. For most, they are an unwelcome reminder of ageing. However, scientists are developing a method that may finally end the need for the routine of treatments and moisturisers used to try to keep facial lines at bay.

Even though women live longer than men, their brains seem to age faster. The reason? Possibly a more stressful life. As people age, some genes become more active while others become less so. In the brain, these changes can be observed through the transcriptome, a set of RNA molecules that indicate the activity of genes within a population of cells.

Scientists may one day slow down aging with a simple injection of youthful stem cells. They’ve just proven this can be done in mice, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications. The mice, which had been engineered to mimic a human disease called progeria, would normally have grown old when they were quite young. But that changed when researchers injected muscle stem cells from healthy young mice into the bellies of the quickly aging mice. Within days, the doddering and frail mice began to act like they were living the storyline of “The Strange Case of Benjamin Button” as they started looking and acting younger.

A biomedical gerontologist and chief scientist of a foundation dedicated to longevity research, de Grey reckons that within his own lifetime doctors could have all the tools they need to "cure" aging -- banishing diseases that come with it and extending life indefinitely.

Scientists may have found the root cause of what makes hair go gray. For the first time, researchers have identified the signaling protein that coordinates the process between hair follicle stem cells, which produce hair, and color-supplying stem cells, or melanocytes.

A study on aging find links between certain genetic variations, people with a long lifespan.

HOT LIST: Who's afraid of getting old? From the lovely Raquel Welch to the ageless Richard Gere, these stars prove that age is truly nothing but a number.

In a surprise result that can help in the understanding of both aging and cancer, researchers working with an engineered type of stem cell said they reversed the aging process in a rare genetic disease.