Endocrine System

Exploring the Relationship Between Aging and Disease

Geroscience seeks to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms responsible for aging as a major driver of common chronic conditions and diseases of older people. Read about the latest advances in the field, funding opportunities, upcoming seminars, and more.

The National Institute on Aging’s Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) is America's longest-running scientific study of human aging. It began in 1958, when gerontology—the study of aging—was still very much in its infancy. Today, the BLSA is world-renowned, having generated thousands of scientific papers and made major contributions to our understanding of what it means to get older.

At 60 years and counting the National Institute on Aging's Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging (BLSA) is one of the longest-running studies in the world. The study was the first to ask a most basic question: What is normal aging?

There is still much to learn, but so far two major conclusions can be drawn from BLSA data. First, "normal" aging cannot be distinguished from disease. Although people's bodies change and can in some ways decline over time, these changes do not inevitably lead to diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, or dementia.

This project involves investigations of signaling mechanisms that regulate stem cell self-renewal, neurogenesis, neurite outgrowth, synaptic plasticity and neuronal survival (Figure 3). This project has evolved from discoveries made in my laboratory during the past 3 decades which revealed roles for neurodegenerative disease-related proteins (e.g., APP, presenilin-1, DJ-1, TNF, and TLRs) in neural plasticity, and vice-versa (e.g., glutamate, BDNF and Notch).