Brain Aging

SUMMERY
At the Swedish medical university Karolinska scientists have found that, by measuring the lactate levels in the brain, they can monitor how quickly brain cells are aging. They used both normally aging mice and premature aging mice in their testing to study how changes in metabolism are related to damage to the mitochondria during cell division in the aging process. Mitochondrial disfunctions are often linked to age-related disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer´s disease. Mitochondrial damage increases with age and alters the genes that form lactate so lactate also increases with aging and it's a good indicator. Hopefully this will allow doctors to give patients their "brain ages" with an MRI.

OPINION
It'll be helpful to be able to measure brain aging. I'm not worried about that yet for myself, but by the time I am old enough to be at risk of neurodegenerative diseases I'm sure this information will be easily at hand. I bet that when this becomes a normal procedure for the elderly, it'll become a legal issue where insurance companies get involved. All the newer advancements in science seem like they're making us rewrite our laws. It's troublesome, but it allows us to strech our imaginations for solutions.

BRITTANY BURNS
http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2010/11/03/lactate_in_the_brain_reveals_aging_process.html