Author: Derek M Huffman1, Jamie N Justice2, Michael B Stout3, James L Kirkland3, Nir Barzilai1, Steven N Austad4
Affiliation: <sup>1</sup> Institute for Aging Research, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York.
<sup>2</sup> Department of Integrative Physiology, University of Colorado Boulder.
<sup>3</sup> Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota.
<sup>4</sup> Department of Biology, University of Alabama at Birmingham. austad@uab.edu.
Conference/Journal: J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci
Date published: 2016 Nov 1
Other:
Volume ID: 71 , Issue ID: 11 , Pages: 1395-1406 , Special Notes: doi: 10.1093/gerona/glw106. , Word Count: 224
Life extension is no longer considered sufficient evidence of delayed aging in research animals. It must also be demonstrated that a broad swathe of health indicators have been extended. During a retreat of the Geroscience Network, a consortium of basic and clinical aging researchers, potential measures of mouse health were considered for their potential as easily standardized, highly informative metrics. Major health domains considered were neuromuscular, cognitive, cardiovascular, metabolic, and inflammatory functions as well as body composition and energetics and a multitude of assays interrogating these domains. A particularly sensitive metric of health is the ability to respond to, and recover, from stress. Therefore, the Network also considered stresses of human relevance that could be implemented in mouse models to assess frailty and resilience. Mouse models already exist for responses to forced immobility, cancer chemotherapy, infectious diseases, dietary challenges, and surgical stress, and it was felt that these could be employed to determine whether putative senescence-retarding interventions increased and extended organismal robustness. The Network discussed challenges in modeling age-related human chronic diseases and concluded that more attention needs to be paid to developing disease models with later age of onset, models of co- and multimorbidity, diversifying the strains and sexes commonly used in aging research, and considering additional species.
Keywords: Health span; aging; animal models; longevity.; preclinical studies.
PMID: 27535967 PMCID: PMC5055649 DOI: 10.1093/gerona/glw106