As each passing year goes by, it’s likely that our joints hurt more, we struggle more to remember where we parked the car, we have less stamina when walking, or we’ve gained some unwanted extra weight almost without realizing it. In other words, we feel these conditions creeping closer: osteoporosis, Alzheimer’s, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes, for example. Is it hypochondria, we wonder? Well, no, because it’s a reality that the likelihood of developing these diseases increases as we age. And then we dream of stopping time, or if that’s not possible (which it doesn’t seem to be, at least for now), at least of slowing down or ideally halting these age-related ailments. Is this possible? Well, it turns out it is.
The path to achieving this goal is being trodden, day by day, by María Mittelbrunn (Madrid, 1977) in her laboratory at the Severo Ochoa Molecular Biology Center (CBMSO), a joint research institute of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Autonomous University of Madrid. This researcher explains why the key lies in the health of our immune system. “These diseases have two things in common: their incidence increases as we age and they’re all associated with chronic inflammation involving immune system cells,” begins this biochemist. “In fact, as we age, chronic inflammation increases, meaning that levels of inflammatory mediators (cytokines and chemokines) in our blood rise. This process is known as inflammaging. And the goal of our laboratory is to investigate whether by delaying this chronic inflammation, which naturally occurs with aging, we can delay age-related diseases.”
