Ito Kazuhiro, Mercado Nicolas
Airways Disease Section, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, SW3 6LY, UK.
Airways Disease Section, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, SW3 6LY, UK.
Exp Gerontol. 2014 Nov;59:21-7. doi: 10.1016/j.exger.2014.03.014. Epub 2014 Apr 5.
Life expectancy is assumed to rise continuously and consequently global burden of age-associated diseases is expected to increase. All vital organs begin to lose some function during aging with different rates, and the same happens on the lung. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic inflammatory disease of the lungs, which progresses very slowly and the majority of patients are therefore elderly. COPD is a major and increasing global health problem with enormous amount of expenditure of indirect/direct health care costs, and therefore, there is urgent need to clarify the molecular mechanism of COPD and develop novel treatments. We here hypothesize that environmental gases, such as cigarette smoke and kitchen pollutants, may accelerate the aging of lung or worsen aging-related events in the lung, leading to defective resolution of inflammation, reduced anti-oxidant capacity and defective disposal of abnormal proteins, and this consequently induces progression of COPD. Recent studies identified some anti-aging small molecules (geroprotectors) that may open up new avenues for the treatment of COPD.
人们认为预期寿命会持续上升，因此与年龄相关疾病的全球负担预计也会增加。在衰老过程中，所有重要器官都会以不同速率开始丧失一些功能，肺部也是如此。慢性阻塞性肺疾病（COPD）是一种肺部慢性炎症性疾病，进展非常缓慢，因此大多数患者为老年人。COPD是一个日益严重的全球性重大健康问题，产生了巨额的间接/直接医疗费用，因此，迫切需要阐明COPD的分子机制并开发新的治疗方法。我们在此提出假设，环境气体，如香烟烟雾和厨房污染物，可能会加速肺部衰老或使肺部与衰老相关的情况恶化，导致炎症消退缺陷、抗氧化能力降低以及异常蛋白质处理缺陷，进而引发COPD的进展。最近的研究发现了一些抗衰老小分子（老年保护剂），这可能为COPD的治疗开辟新途径。
