October 21, 2021

Age versus Frailty as a Predictor of Mortality

A number of companies and research groups are performing drug discovery by using effects on frailty in mice as a readout. To what degree is frailty an adequate measure of the harms done by aging? One way to answer that question is to assess mortality in a human study population […]
October 20, 2021

Extending Life Without Extending Health: Vast Effort Directed to the Wrong Goals

It is very hard to coax a damaged machine into continued operation without repairing the damage. It is expensive and time-consuming, the machine works poorly, and fails catastrophically only a little later than it would have done without all of that effort. Keeping damaged machines running is exactly the goal […]
October 19, 2021

Cerebral Small Vessel Disease as a General Microvascular Issue Rather than a Specifically Atherosclerotic Issue

The aging of large blood vessels in the brain, and their resulting dysfunctions, are quite different from those of the small vessels, the microvasculature. Large vessels are predominantly affected by atherosclerosis, the buildup of fatty plaques that weaken and narrow blood vessels, leading to the catastrophic structural failure of a […]