December 2003 issue

Still mostly reading the abstracts. I managed to get the only paper I would have read out of these from the author's site, so it isn't as big a loss as usual, but I would still like to read the full literature review and dissertations columns.

"Telomeres Shorten with Age in Rat Cerebellum and Cortex in vivo". It seems like they measured telomere length and telomerase activity in 21 day old and 5 month old rat cortices and cerebellums. Shorter telomeres in older. Shorter in cortex than cerebellum. Higher telomerase in older than younger, and in cerebellums than in cortices. All this shortening presumed by authors to be from microglia since only replicating cell in brain. Very well cited paper. Not that interesting to me, but all things telomere seemed to be popular then.


"Will Human Life Expectancy Quadruple in the Next Hundred Years? Sixty Gerontologists Say Public Debate on Life Extension Is Necessary". Survey of gerontologists predicting future life exptectancy.

"Telomerase, Telomerase Inhibition, and Cancer".  This one sounded interesting, and I found it on the author's page, so separate post for it.

"Reduced Level of Serum Thiols in Patients with a Diagnosis of Active Disease". Lower serum protein thiols in sick people than in healthy people. Implied lower oxidation in healthy.

"Soy-Induced Brain Atrophy?". Maybe soy lowers BDNF in males.

The literature review column looks at a paper analysing people with skin grafts sourced from their own body and cultured (autologous skin grafts), and seeing shorter telomeres in their grafted bits than in their intact bits. Review mentions that there were only four patients and controls (intact skin) was taken from only two of them. Still, it'd make sense if it was the case.  (UPDATE: found the full review. They also look at a paper that finds a negative correlation between telomere length shortening rate in birds and their lifespan)

The first page of the dissertations section had the summary for a thesis on the effect of fitness on the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis on women, and another for automated brain segmentation from MRI images to measure brain bits as they age, in monkeys.