New Anti-Aging Mechanism Offers Promise of “Perfection”

An anti-aging mechanism might provide a new form of treatment for osteoporosis. The following brief piece will offer an overview of the illness, as well as examine this new remedial technique.

Osteoporosis Overview

This ailment, which impacts more than three million Americans per year, is a structural disease in which the body fails to produce new bone tissue to replace old, damaged or weakened tissues. Progressive bone loss could precipitate pain and physical injuries and, should bone loss grow severe, render the affected individual susceptible to serious injuries like bone fractures and immobility problems.

Typically, the disease impacts older persons, especially menopausal or post-menopausal women. However, the malady affects men as well and could additionally affect younger people who have various bone, hormonal or metabolic issues.

Causes

The condition can be precipitated by a variety of mitigating factors. Arguably, one of the biggest underlying culprits is a lack of accumulated bone mass. Doctors and medical researchers opine that persons who executed bone-strengthening exercises, adhered to balanced diets and tended to any physical injuries while they were young, assuming their bodies could generate new bone tissues, are less likely to develop the disease than those who did not follow such practices.

Despite those efforts, the ailment can be elicited by other factors, including diseases that cause a reproductive hormonal imbalance (particularly those that disrupt the normal production of estrogen in women), specific medications, an overactive thyroid gland, various digestive and autoimmune disorders, eating disorders that prevent normal caloric intake, malabsorption illnesses that prohibit the body from synthesizing vital nutrients, low calcium (a vital bone-building nutritional element) and poor lifestyle choices, such as excessive alcohol intake or cigarette smoking.

Severe bone weakness might also be influenced by certain unavoidable risk factors. These factors include age, gender (women are usually at greater risk of developing the ailment), ethnicity (white and Asian individuals are typically more susceptible), family history and having a small body frame.

Symptoms

In its early stages, the ailment often causes few or no physical manifestations. On numerous occasions, the first indication that something is amiss occurs when an affected person experiences significant pain or a fracture in the impacted bone. Additionally, the individual’s bones could be so weak that minor injuries, slight falls or even coughing could precipitate bone breaks. Though fractures can and do occur in any impacted bone, they are most common in the spine, hip and wrist. Spinal and hip breaks can lead to serious pain and potentially permanent mobility problems.

Treatment Options

Naturally, treatment protocols will be devised based on the exact underlying cause of the illness. Specific therapeutic protocols might include the administration of medications to slow the progression of the disease or any other precipitating cause and ease associated pain, the intake of calcium supplements designed to strengthen bones, physical therapy to help affected persons regain or maintain usage of impacted bones, hormone replacement therapy or surgery to repair very weakened or fractured bones.

Breakthrough Treatment Found in Anti-Aging Mechanism

Scientists are confident that a mechanism known as cellular senescence could provide a significant new remedial endeavor for bone diseases connected to aging, hormonal imbalances and other causes. A team of researchers employed by the Mayo Clinic’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science has studied the effect of senescent cells on the development of specific illnesses.

These types of cells fail to regenerate. Researchers examined subjects that included mice and humans, and they discovered that senescent cells are found in bones and accumulate with age. They also concluded that senescent cells produce and secrete substances that stimulate the development of inflammation, which is often the precursor to cellular and bone damage.

The Mayo Clinic-based researchers believe that isolating these cells could eventually lead to the creation of new drugs and therapies that could curtail or potentially prevent the onset of bone destruction. They have experimented on mice by clearing senescent cells from the subjects’ bones over a two-month period. When the experiment was completed, researchers found that the subjects had improved strength and increased bone mass.

Further Consideration

Though promising, researchers caution that the scientific community has only begun testing the effects of senescent cells on human subjects; the next phase of human experimentation is set to occur in 2021 and 2022.