Aging-Related Inflammation Is Not Universal Across Human Populations

Summary

Inflammation, long considered a hallmark of aging, may not be a universal human experience, according to a new study from Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The research suggests that "inflammaging"—chronic, low-grade inflammation associated with aging—appears to be a byproduct of industrialized lifestyles and varies significantly across global populations. The findings are published in Nature Aging. Researchers analyzed data from four populations: two industrialized groups—the Italian InCHIANTI study and the Singapore Longitudinal Aging Study (SLAS)—and two Indigenous, non-industrialized populations—the Tsimane of the Bolivian Amazon and the Orang Asli of Peninsular Malaysia. While the inflammaging signature was similar between the two industrialized populations, it did not hold in the Indigenous groups, where inflammation levels were largely driven by infection rather than age. “In industrialized settings, we see clear links between inflammaging and diseases like chronic kidney disease,” said lead author Alan Cohen, PhD, associate professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School and faculty member of the Butler Columbia Aging Center. “But in populations with high infection rates, inflammation appears more reflective of infectious disease burden than of aging itself.” Interestingly, while the indigenous populations, particularly the Tsimane, had high constitutive levels of inflammation, these did not increase with age and, crucially, did not lead to the chronic diseases that plague industrialized societies. In fact, most chronic diseases— diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, etc.—are rare or largely absent in the Indigenous populations, meaning that even when young Indigenous people have profiles that look similar on the surface to those of older industrialized adults, these profiles do not lead to pathological consequences. “These findings really call into question the idea that inflammation is bad per se,” said Cohen. “Rath...