title: High-glucose diets have sex-specific effects on aging in C. elegans: toxic to hermaphrodites but beneficial to males.
abstract: Diet and sex are important determinants of lifespan. In humans, high sugar diets, obesity, and type 2 diabetes correlate with decreased lifespan, and females generally live longer than males. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a classical model for aging studies, and has also proven useful for characterizing the response to high-glucose diets. However, studies on male animals are lacking. We found a surprising dichotomy: glucose regulates lifespan and aging in a sex-specific manner, with beneficial effects on males compared to toxic effects on hermaphrodites. High-glucose diet resulted in greater mobility with age for males, along with a modest increase in median lifespan. In contrast, high-glucose diets decrease both lifespan and mobility for hermaphrodites. Understanding sex-specific responses to high-glucose diets will be important for determining which evolutionarily conserved glucose-responsive pathways that regulate aging are "universal" and which are likely to be cell-type or sex-specific.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA 01610, USA.
authors.forename: Marjorie R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Liggett
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA 01610, USA.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Hoy
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA 01610, USA.
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mastroianni
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA 01610, USA.
authors.forename: Michelle A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Mondoux
mesh_terms: D000375:Aging / Q000187:drug effects*; D000821:Animal Feed / Q000032:analysis*; D000818:Animals; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000187:drug effects*; D005260:Female; D005947:Glucose / Q000494:pharmacology*; D057850:Hermaphroditic Organisms / Q000187:drug effects*; D008297:Male; D009043:Motor Activity / Q000187:drug effects; D012737:Sex Factors
chemical_list: D005947:Glucose
keywords: C. elegans; glucose; healthspan; mobility; sex specificity