Publications by authors named "Walston J"

Objectives: Reaching the moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) recommendations of 150 min/wk is difficult for older adults, particularly among those living with frailty and its associated risk of dementia. We examined the dose-response relationship between MVPA and dementia risk among at-risk persons living with and without frailty enrolled in the UK Biobank study.

Design: Survival analysis within a prospective cohort study.

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Clinical trials have shown favorable effects of exercise on frailty, supporting physical activity (PA) as a treatment and prevention strategy. Proteomics studies suggest that PA alters levels of many proteins, some of which may function as molecules in the biological processes underlying frailty. However, these studies have focused on structured exercise programs or cross-sectional PA-protein associations.

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Resilience to stressors has emerged as a major gerontological concept aiming to promote more positive outcomes for older adults. Achieving this aim relies on determining mechanisms underlying capacity to respond resiliently. This paper seeks proof of principle for the hypothesis that physical aspects of said capacity are rooted in the fitness of one's physiology governing stress response, conceptualized as a dynamical system.

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Background: Available evidence supports the importance of inflammation in atrial fibrillation (AF) pathogenesis, yet general anti-inflammatory therapies have failed to show benefit for prevention of the arrhythmia. Better understanding of the specific inflammatory pathways involved is necessary to advance therapeutics.

Methods And Results: We evaluated 9 circulating markers of inflammation measured by immunoassays and incidence of AF in a population-based older cohort.

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Frailty is a syndrome that can inform clinical treatments and interventions for older adults. Although implementation of frailty across medical subspecialties has the potential to improve care for the aging population, its uptake has been heterogenous. While frailty assessment is highly integrated into certain medical subspecialties, other subspecialties have only recently begun to consider frailty in the context of patient care.

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Background: Although the pathogenesis of delirium is poorly understood, increasing evidence supports a role for inflammation. Previously, individual inflammatory biomarkers have been associated with delirium. Aggregating biomarkers into an index may provide more information than individual biomarkers in predicting certain health outcomes (eg, mortality); however, inflammatory indices have not yet been examined in delirium.

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The "Stress Tests and Biomarkers of Resilience" conference, hosted by the American Geriatrics Society and the National Institute on Aging, marks the second in a series aimed at advancing the field of resilience science. Held on March 4-5, 2024, in Bethesda, Maryland, this conference built upon the foundational work from the first conference, which focused on defining resilience across various domains-physical, cognitive, and psychosocial. This year's gathering centered around three factors: the biology that underlies resilient outcomes; the social, environmental, genetic, and psychosocial factors that impact that resilience biology; and the biomarker testing and imaging that predicts resilient outcomes for older adults.

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Context: Body composition and glucose metabolism change with aging. Whether different levels of body-mass-index (BMI) are needed to define diabetes risk across the adult lifespan is unknown.

Objective: This work aimed to investigate whether BMI similarly reflects relative fat mass (FM) and diabetes risk across age groups.

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Article Synopsis
  • Advancing age makes it harder for people to fight skin melanoma, a type of skin cancer.
  • Scientists found that tiny particles called extracellular vesicles (EVs) from older cells change in content, even though they look the same as those from younger cells.
  • A special protein called CD9 decreases as we age, which affects how these EVs can help tumors grow, making older cells better at supporting cancer.
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Aging negatively impacts skin health, notably through the senescent cell phenotype, which reduces collagen production and leads to thinner, more fragile skin prone to injuries and chronic wounds. We designed a drug delivery system that addresses these age-related issues using a hybrid hydrogel-nanoparticle system that utilizes a poly(δ-valerolactone--lactide)--poly(ethylene-glycol)--poly(δ-valerolactone--lactide) (PVLA-PEG-PVLA) hydrogel. This hydrogel allows for the local, extended release of therapeutics targeting both proliferating and senescent cells.

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Cell motility plays an essential role in many biological processes as cells move and interact within their local microenvironments. Current methods for quantifying cell motility typically involve tracking individual cells over time, but the results are often presented as averaged values across cell populations. While informative, these ensemble approaches have limitations in assessing cellular heterogeneity and identifying generalizable patterns of single-cell behaviors, at baseline and in response to perturbations.

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Aging is a major driver of diseases in humans. Identifying features associated with aging is essential for designing robust intervention strategies and discovering novel biomarkers of aging. Extensive studies at both the molecular and organ/whole-body physiological scales have helped determined features associated with aging.

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Large Language Models (LLMs) stand on the brink of reshaping the field of aging and dementia care, challenging the one-size-fits-all paradigm with their capacity for precision medicine and individualized treatment strategies. The "Large Pre-Trained Models with a Focus on AD/ADRD and Healthy Aging" symposium, organized by the National Institute on Aging and the Johns Hopkins Artificial Intelligence & Technology Collaboratory for Aging Research, served as a platform for exploring this potential. The symposium brought together diverse experts to discuss the integration of LLMs in aging and dementia care.

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Physical frailty is a syndrome that typically manifests in later life, although the pathogenic process causing physical frailty likely begins decades earlier. To date, few studies have examined the biological signatures in mid-life associated with physical frailty later in life. Among 4,189 middle-aged participants (57.

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Cellular senescence is an established driver of aging, exhibiting context-dependent phenotypes across multiple biological length-scales. Despite its mechanistic importance, profiling senescence within cell populations is challenging. This is in part due to the limitations of current biomarkers to robustly identify senescent cells across biological settings, and the heterogeneous, non-binary phenotypes exhibited by senescent cells.

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Article Synopsis
  • Cardiovascular disease is linked to frailty in individuals, but the exact reasons for this connection are not fully understood; the study aims to explore this relationship through the MESA study.
  • A total of 3,045 participants underwent heart imaging procedures and completed a walking test and questionnaires to assess their frailty status, with analysis done on various cardiovascular health indicators.
  • Results indicated that older age, female gender, and specific cardiac conditions (like left ventricular remodeling and myocardial fibrosis) were significantly associated with an increased likelihood of being frail and performing poorly on the walking test.
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The Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), signed in 2022 by Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, recognized the importance of area-based conservation, and its goals and targets specify the characteristics of protected and conserved areas (PCAs) that disproportionately contribute to biodiversity conservation. To achieve the GBF's target of conserving a global area of 30% by 2030, this Essay argues for recognizing these characteristics and scaling them up through the conservation of areas that are: extensive (typically larger than 5,000 km2); have interconnected PCAs (either physically or as part of a jurisdictional network, and frequently embedded in larger conservation landscapes); have high ecological integrity; and are effectively managed and equitably governed. These areas are presented as "Nature's Strongholds," illustrated by examples from the Congo and Amazon basins.

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Allogeneic blood and marrow transplantation (alloBMT) is increasingly being used in older patients with blood cancer. Aging is associated with an increasing incidence of clonal hematopoiesis (CH). Although the effects of donor CH on alloBMT has been reported, the impact of recipient CH on alloBMT outcomes is unknown.

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Tryptophan catabolism is highly conserved and generates important bioactive metabolites, including kynurenines, and in some animals, NAD. Aging and inflammation are associated with increased levels of kynurenine pathway (KP) metabolites and depleted NAD, factors which are implicated as contributors to frailty and morbidity. Contrastingly, KP suppression and NAD supplementation are associated with increased life span in some animals.

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The World Health Organization recently declared 2021-2030 the decade of healthy aging. Such emphasis on healthy aging requires an understanding of the biologic challenges aging populations face. Physical frailty is a syndrome of vulnerability that puts a subset of older adults at high risk for adverse health outcomes including functional and cognitive decline, falls, hospitalization, and mortality.

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Key Points: Photovoice, a qualitative method, visually depicted the daily lives of participants with frailty, providing insights into independence and symptom management to guide clinicians and researchers. This photovoice study uncovered subthemes of home safety and organization, revealing potential safety hazards like dialysis fluid storage, and suggests its potential use in geriatric nephrology. The findings emphasize the importance of integrating participant values and goals into care decisions and interventional design in the context of kidney transplant journeys for frail adults.

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Cellular senescence is a major driver of aging and disease. Here we show that substrate stiffness modulates the emergence and magnitude of senescence phenotypes after exposure to senescence inducers. Using a primary dermal fibroblast model, we show that decreased substrate stiffness accelerates senescence-associated cell-cycle arrest and regulates the expression of conventional protein-based biomarkers of senescence.

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