MINNEAPOLIS/ST. PAUL (11/20/2024) — Published in Nature Aging , new research led by a University of Minnesota Medical School research team studies how stress and aging are linked through shared biological mechanisms. The study aims to determine how exposure to social and psychological stressors can accelerate aging and affect health in preclinical models.
The research team found that social stress causes neurons in the hippocampus and cortex of preclinical models to show signs of senescence and DNA damage, common features of accelerated aging. This discovery highlights a potential way that stress in the social environment can accelerate the aging process.
“This research was inspired by a significant amount of work proving that life stress, social determinants and low socioeconomic status, in particular, adversely affect health and aging in humans. However, the causal mechanisms are almost impossible to identify in humans,” said Alessandro Bartolomucci, PhD, a professor at the U of M Medical School and senior author of the study. “Our study represents the first step in the quest to identify how life stress can impact aging. The observation that social stressors increase markers of cellular senescence in the brain and other organs, which appears to be driven by DNA damage, among other factors, was a major finding.”
Future research will focus on understanding how stress influences several interconnected biological mechanisms known as hallmarks of aging, and whether targeting these mechanisms could help protect against the adverse health impact of life stress on the aging process.
Funding was provided primarily by the National Institute on Aging, and the MN Partnership for Biotechnology and Molecular Genomics.
Nature Aging
Experimental study
Animals
Chronic social stress induces p16-mediated senescent cell accumulation in mice
11-Nov-2024
D.J.B. and J.M.v.D. have a potential financial interest related to this research. J.M.v.D. is a cofounder of Unity Biotechnology, D.J.B. and J.M.v.D. are co-inventors on patents held by Mayo Clinic and patent applications licensed to or filed by Unity Biotechnology, and D.J.B. and J.M.v.D. are Unity shareholders. Research in the Baker laboratory has been reviewed by the Mayo Clinic Conflict of Interest Review Board and is being conducted in compliance with Mayo Clinic Conflict of Interest policies. The other authors declare no conflicts of interest.