A long-standing belief about the body’s natural response to aging may be wrong, a new study suggests.
Inflammaging is a chronic, low-grade form of inflammation that develops with advancing age. Inflammation protects the body from injury or infection.
Chronic inflammation is thought to speed up the ageing process and contribute to various health conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, cancer, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes,
Researchers have long believed that most older people will suffer from inflammageing as they age.
However the study, published in Nature Age this week, found that people in nonindustrialized areas experience inflammation differently than those in urban areas and there may be another cause behind it.
Researchers compared the lives of two indigenous, nonindustrialized populations – the Tsimane from the Bolivian Amazon and the Orang Asli from Peninsular Malaysia – with two groups from Italy and Singapore. Researchers compared blood samples from about 2,800 adults between 18 and 95 in the four groups.
They found that chronic inflammation may not be linked explicitly to ageing, but rather that diet, lifestyle and environmental factors are more significant factors than previously thought.
The study also showed that inflammation in the nonindustrialized groups did not appear to increase as subjects got older.
Alan Cohen, associate professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University and co-author of the study, said the findings suggest inflammation is “more complex than we currently understand.”
“The Tsimane and Orang Asli differ from us in all these ways,” he told The Independent. “The insight of our study is not to say we need to be more active, but to challenge the idea that we understand biology well and can micromanage it.
“So it’s a warning – don’t follow the latest trends of eating foods specifically to reduce inflammation, or whatever else the trend of the week may be.”
However, other experts shared a word of caution before jumping to conclusions from the study.
Vishwa Deep Dixit, director of the Yale Center for Research on Aging, told the New York Times it’s not surprising that people less exposed to pollution would see lower rates of chronic disease. The findings should lead to valuable discussion but would need further study “before we rewrite the inflammaging narrative,” professor of pharmacology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine Bimal Desai added.
