Title:Biological Predictors of Aging and Potential of FTIR to Study Age-related Diseases and Aging Metabolic Fingerprint
Volume: 5
Issue: 2
Author(s): Ana Graça, Sandra Magalhães and Alexandra Nunes*
Affiliation:
- Department of Medical Sciences, University of Aveiro, Agra do Crasto, Campus Universitário de Santiago, 3810-193 – Aveiro,Portugal
Keywords:
Aging, aging biomarkers, age-related diseases, FTIR, hallmarks of aging, metabolomics.
Abstract: Background:It is known that the increasing aging of population is the origin of enormous
challenges to healthcare provision and treatment of age-related diseases, "aging" being a promissory
research field. One of the emerging focus of aging research is to find suitable ways to increase healthspan,
rather than lifespan. In this way, metabolomic analysis seems promising once metabolite analysis
is been used in several studies of human populations in order to understand both physiological and
pathologic metabolic processes.
Focus: Human metabolome changes along with age and those changes are certainly related to the onset
of several age related diseases. It is expectable that the study of aging metabolome could help to
understand molecular physiology of aging and age related diseases. In order to extract information
from the data obtained by all metabolomics techniques applied in this research field it is crucial to recognize
the corresponding metabolites, in particular the biological predictors of aging, that is, molecules
that ultimately could be used to predict the aging status of tissues, organs or the entire individual.
Prospect: This review presents an exhaustive list of the main classes of the biological predictors of aging,
some of which are potential aging biomarkers. The gathered information can be used to sustain
the information obtained by the several metabolomics approaches dedicated to the study of aging. This
work also defines and characterizes aging, briefly summarizes the main theories and senescence
mechanisms and describes the hallmarks of aging. An overview of Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy
technique and its potential to study the metabolome of aging is also presented.
