Ageing, Cellular Senescence and Diabetes, Exploring the Connections between these Processes and their Implications for Treatment and Management
Author(s):
Chrysanthus Chukwuma Sr
The defined disparity between ageing and senescence is that ageing constitutes an intricately complex and definite biological mechanism characterized by a progressive depreciation in physiological functionalities and elevated mortality risk. Senescence features a cellular mechanism of a conditioned state of the arrest of cell cycle and secretion of inflammatory molecules. Cellular senescence correlates to the ageing process as the ageing immune system declines in efficiency culminating in senescent cells accumulation with superimposition on healthy cells. This impacts ability to cope with stress or impaired health, injury recovery, and configure or inculcate new ideas as brain senescent cells are capable of the impairment of cognitive activities. The aetiologies of cellular senescence are triggered by multifarious factors which include reiterated cell culture, telomere attrition, irradiation, oncogene activation, and oxidative derangement, as well as impairment of mitochondrial homeostasis, with propensity to accelerate age-associated phenotypes. The pathophysiologic mechanisms related with diabetes impacting the ageing elderly population due to advanced age culminate in the exacerbation of systemic chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, DNA damage, decline of mitochondrial function, cellular senescence, and tissue dysfunction, all conditions which contribute to generate metabolic disorders. With increasing age, the pancreas produces diminished insulin and resultant prolonged increased blood sugar. The process of cellular ageing is associated with increasing cell size and diminished capabilities to divide and/or multiply. In addition to other alterations, there is augmentation of pigments and fatty structures or lipids within the cells. Ageing impacts cellular actions which contribute to age-related disorders as ageing cells accumulate misfolded and perturbed proteins due to functional deterioration in the homeostasis or proteostasis process of the proteins. The cellular senescence mechanism results since cellular senescence is a highly formidable cell cycle arrest that is generated in reaction to disparate stresses. With the imposition of any growth arrest, senescence restricts aged or deranged cell replication. Age constitutes a major risk factor for type 2 diabetes However, it is not clearly explicated how senescence contributes to the pathogenesis of diabetes. Thus, available treatment regimen has not targeted the defined portion of the disease. Suppression of the deranged presentations of cellular ageing is important as a novel type 2 diabetes treatment where pancreatic beta cells is impaired regarding insulin secretion. Adequate therapeutic trajectories necessitate characterization of senescent β-cell populations and the spatiotemporal variations of senescence gene expression.
