The chronic inflammatory process is one of the key mechanisms of aging and associated diseases. «Inflammatory aging», or «Inflammaging», means age-related changes associated with an inflammatory process occurring at the cellular level. The molecular and biological parameters of this process are now actively investigated.
OBJECTIVE
To analyze the literature on inflammatory aging and identify metabolic and/or signaling pathways whose impaired activity can be determined by measuring the concentrations of circulating biomarkers.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The literature search included the most recent publications in the eLIBRARY.ru, PubMed, and Google Scholar databases starting in 2017, using the keywords inflammation, inflammaging, metaflammation, biomarkers of inflammation, and chronic non-communicable diseases.
RESULTS
We identified the metabolic and/or signaling pathways that determine early biological aging and analyzed signs of aging such as genomic instability, telomere shortening, epigenetic changes, disturbances in proteostasis and autophagy, abnormalities in nutrient recognition, mitochondrial dysfunction, altered intercellular communication, and accumulation of senescent cells with depletion of the stem cells pool. Part 1 of the review presents the concept of the complex nature of inflammatory aging, systematizes the basic characteristics of aging, and describes metabolic and signaling pathways that control these mechanisms.
CONCLUSION
The aging process is associated with complex immune system dysfunction, mainly due to the development of chronic low-intensity inflammation.