title: What is an anti-aging treatment?
abstract: Key objectives of biogerontology are to understand the biology of aging and to translate scientific insight into interventions that improve late-life health - or anti-aging treatments. In this context, when considering the problem of how to effect translational research, it is useful to have a clear, consensus view on what exactly constitutes an anti-aging treatment. This essay critically assesses the understanding of this concept common among biogerontologists, and proposes a new definition. A current conception of anti-aging treatment imagines a primary cause of aging that is causally upstream of, and the cause of, all age-related pathology. Intervening in this aging process thus protects against the totality of age-related diseases. However, this underlying aging process remains an abstraction. By contrast, what is demonstrable is that interventions in model organisms can improve late-life health and extend lifespan. Furthermore, a safe deduction is that treatments that extend lifespan do so by reducing age-related pathology, both florid and subtle. What is currently identifiable about aging (i.e. senescence) is that it is a very complex disease syndrome, likely involving a number of biological mechanisms. Treatments that substantially extend lifespan must suppress multiple pathologies that otherwise limit lifespan, but whether they suppress the entire aging process remains undemonstrated. A more pragmatic and realistic definition of anti-aging treatment is any preventative approach to reduce late-life pathology, based on the understanding that senescence is a disease syndrome. This definition would encompass preventative approaches aimed at both broad and narrow spectra of age-related pathologies. Its adoption would facilitate translation, since it would shift the emphasis to medical practice, particularly the introduction of preventative approaches. Narrow spectrum anti-aging treatments (e.g. the cardiovascular polypill) could establish a practice that eventually extends to broader spectrum anti-aging treatments (e.g. dietary restriction mimetics).
authors.affiliation: Institute of Healthy Ageing, and Genetics, Evolution and Environment, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom. Electronic address: david.gems@ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gems
mesh_terms: D000367:Age Factors; D000375:Aging / Q000187:drug effects* / Q000473:pathology; D000818:Animals; D031204:Caloric Restriction; D016922:Cellular Senescence; D005853:Geriatrics / Q000379:methods*; D006304:Health Status; D006801:Humans; D008136:Longevity; D011322:Primary Prevention; D009626:Terminology as Topic
keywords: Aging; Biogerontology; Disease; Prevention; Translation