Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias are heartbreaking conditions that rob people of their very minds. These diseases are being aggressively studied to determine the underlying causes and to find cures for them. So-called “normal aging” is not considered to be in the same category as those other maladies. Aging is not defined as a disease by the medical establishment. This stems from the observation that, if people live long enough, they inevitably suffer some cognitive decline. Thus, cognitive decline must be normal at advanced ages, and nothing can be done about it. It is a waste of time and effort to even try.

That “logic” makes no sense.

Just because everybody eventually succumbs to a condition does that mean that nothing can be done. It just means that we have not yet figured out the solution to the problem. If you don’t even recognize that you have a potentially solvable problem, your chance of solving it is zero.

Are there factors that are found in recognized neurological diseases that are also found in aging? Yes, there are. One such factor is brain inflammation. Inflammation is the body’s response to a harmful stimulus. Normally this is good, and even protective. However, chronic inflammation is inflammation that, once turned on, is never turned off. This causes harm to normal cells, rather that whatever triggered the inflammatory response in the first place.

As people (and other animals as well) age, some of the cells in their bodies undergo a process called senescence. Senescent cells stop doing their job, and instead start secreting pro-inflammatory cytokines, chemokines, growth factors, and extracellular matrix proteases. This process weakens the body’s ability to function, and it also causes other nearby cells to become senescent.

A paper that appeared in the January 20, 2021 issue of the journal, Aging Cell, discusses recent research conducted at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA. The paper is titled, “Whole-body senescent cell clearance alleviates age-related brain inflammation and cognitive impairment in mice.” That sounds promising. Mice are not people, but they are fellow mammals. They are used in experiments because you can perform experiments on mice that you cannot ethically perform on people.

The experiment was simple. The experimental subjects were transgenic mice that are sensitive to the drug AP20187. It causes cells that express a particular protein to self-destruct. Since such cells seem to be associated with inflammation, the object was to see if eliminating those cells would reduce chronic inflammation in old mice and thus extend life.

The experimental subjects were divided into six groups:

• Old mice who were treated with AP20187 (AP)
• Old mice who were treated with the senolytic drugs dasatinib and quercetin (D + Q)
• Old mice who were given a sham treatment with just the drug vehicle
• Young mice who were treated with AP
• Young mice who were treated with D + Q
• Young mice who were given only the drug vehicle

The results were interesting:

• Old mice treated with AP recovered cognitive abilities that they had lost
• Old mice treated with D + Q recovered cognitive abilities that they had lost
• Old mice given only the vehicle had no change in cognitive performance
• Young mice who were treated with AP had no change in cognitive performance
• Young mice who were treated with D + Q had no change in cognitive performance
• Young mice who were given only the drug vehicle showed no change in cognitive performance

This looks promising. It appears to me that follow-up studies with human volunteers are called for.