{"id":8303,"date":"2017-03-01T17:55:02","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T23:55:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=8303"},"modified":"2017-03-01T17:55:02","modified_gmt":"2017-03-01T23:55:02","slug":"senescence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/03\/01\/senescence\/","title":{"rendered":"Senescence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong>NewScientist<\/strong><\/em> (11 February 2017) reports on a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2120249-drug-stops-nasty-chemotherapy-side-effects-in-mice-with-cancer\/\" target=\"_blank\">fascinating new finding<\/a> with regards to cancer:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When older cells naturally stop dividing, they become \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg22730390-500-secret-to-old-age-health-could-lie-in-purging-worn-out-cells\/\">senescent<\/a>\u201d. These kinds of cells also pump out a slew of chemicals that cause inflammation, which can damage surrounding tissue. Senescent cells have been linked to a growing list of age-related diseases, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/mg21528843-200-ageing-cells-offer-new-target-for-alzheimers-therapy\/\">Alzheimer\u2019s<\/a>, osteoporosis and heart failure.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rug.nl\/staff\/m.demaria\/research\">Marco Demaria<\/a> at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands wondered if senescence might be responsible for the long list of side effects associated with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2080315-gene-test-can-tell-people-with-breast-cancer-if-they-need-chemo\/\">chemotherapy<\/a>. \u201cMost people have fatigue, and most of the time this becomes chronic,\u201d he says. \u201cSome people have muscle weakness, nausea, dizziness, problems with their bones or heart damage for example.\u201d Such side effects can occur for months after treatment has finished.<\/p>\n<p>To explore the effects of senescent cells, Demaria and his colleagues genetically engineered mice so these cells would fluoresce. They then gave the mice cancer, and one of four common chemotherapy drugs: doxorubicin, cisplatin, paclitaxel and temozolomide.<\/p>\n<p>Chemotherapy increased the number of senescent cells in the mice. \u201cWe saw senescence everywhere: in the liver, lung, heart, skin and fat,\u201d says Demaria.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In another trial,\u00a0they gave the mice a drug known to kill senescent cells, and the mice didn&#8217;t show the health problems shown by the first group. Unfortunately &#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIf we had a drug that we could use in humans, we could lower the toxicity and improve the efficacy of chemotherapy,\u201d says Demaria. At the moment, there isn\u2019t an appropriate drug that could be trialled in people. The drug given to the mice can cause a fatal shortage of blood platelets in humans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But at least there&#8217;s a target. Chemo-fatigue is a fairly awful side effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NewScientist (11 February 2017) reports on a fascinating new finding with regards to cancer: When older cells naturally stop dividing, they become \u201csenescent\u201d. These kinds of cells also pump out a slew of chemicals that cause inflammation, which can damage surrounding tissue. Senescent cells have been linked to a growing \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/03\/01\/senescence\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8303"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8317,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8303\/revisions\/8317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}