Giving Compass' Take:

• A genetic discovery in worms suggests there may be molecular switches controlling lifespan and healthspan, separately.

• How can we improve human healthspan? What other factors apply to increase our quality and length of life? 

• Here's how healthy aging may become the norm in the future. 

Aging research indicates that better healthspan may be more important than lifespan.

Healthspan includes a set of parameters like mobility and immune resistance that are distinct from lifespan, which is easier to measure. In the long run, it may be more relevant to modify healthspan, even though it’s harder to study, says senior author Arjumand Ghazi, associate professor of pediatrics, developmental biology, and cell biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC Children’s Hospital.

She uses the Greek myth of Eos and Tithonus to describe the difference: “The goddess Eos fell in love with a mortal man, Tithonus, and asked that he be granted eternal life, but forgot to ask for eternal youth. Tithonus lived forever but as a frail and immobile old man.”

LONGEVITY GENE TCER-1
As reported in Nature Communications, Ghazi and her team focused on a protein called TCER-1 in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Earlier work from their lab showed that TCER-1 promotes longevity in worms and also is critical to its fertility.

Longevity genes in many animals increase resistance to stressors, such as infection, so the researchers expected that removing TCER-1 would make the worms less resilient.

Much to their surprise, they saw the exact opposite. When infected with bacteria, subjected to DNA-damaging radiation, or high temperatures, worms without TCER-1 survived much longer than normal worms.

Read the full article about longevity and healthspan research by Arvind Suresh at Futurity.