Inflammatory aging (inflammaging) means aging associated with inflammation. The concept of the complex nature of inflammaging allows identifying the main signs of aging. Chronic and metabolic inflammation shall be specifically considered as key mechanisms of accelerated biological aging.
OBJECTIVE
To analyze the problem of inflammatory aging and identify metabolic and/or signaling pathways with impaired activity that can be detected by measuring the concentrations of circulating biomarkers.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The search was conducted using the eLibrary.ru, PubMed, and Google Scholar databases among publications in Russian and English by the keywords inflammaging, metaflammation, biomarkers of inflammaging, and chronic non-communicable diseases. The search included publications from 2017 till today.
RESULTS
We considered two key mechanisms of aging: chronic inflammation and metabolic inflammation, associated with changes in the microbiota composition. By their set of features, the signs of inflammatory aging were divided into three groups: primary (genomic instability, telomere shortening, epigenetic changes, and proteostasis and macroautophagy disorders), antagonistic (impaired nutrient recognition, mitochondrial dysfunction, accumulation of senescent cells), and integral (stem cell depletion, changes in intercellular communication, chronic inflammation, and dysbiosis). The authors proposed a list of potential biomarkers, from proinflammatory cytokines to heat shock proteins and circulating microRNA. The published data suggests the possibility of using circulating biomarkers associated with chronic inflammation to detect persons at risk of accelerated biological aging.
CONCLUSION
Combining molecular biomarkers with innovative biochemical markers specific to a certain disease is a promising strategy for determining the aging phenotype.