Promising research could limit the diseases of aging, but it’s not getting enough federal funding. Bernie Sanders and other politicians have been warning about the risk of Medicare and Medicaid going bankrupt. Concern for insolvency is certainly real. It’s expected that the number of Americans over the age of 65 in the United States will “double from roughly 50 million today to nearly 100 million by 2060,” according to a commentary in Forbes. However, the evolving science of molecular biology that may hold the key to solving this problem. According to nature.com, “the science of aging has grown in molecular detail. It is now becoming clear that changes at the levels of DNA, protein, cells an
An important discovery in telomere biology has been made by a team of Australian scientists, with implications for conditions ranging from cancer to ageing and heart disease. Telomeres are DNA segments at the ends of every human chromosome. As we age, telomere length naturally decreases. Over the course of a lifetime, telomere shortening instructs ageing cells to stop dividing. This normally functions as a critical barrier to stop cancer. However, some people are born with abnormally short telomeres and suffer from bone marrow failure, pulmonary fibrosis and high rates of cancer. Telomere length is also an important marker of disease risk for conditions such as cancer, heart disease and diab
