Inflammaging, age-related diseases and osteoarthritis

E.G. Zotkin, I.S. Dydykina, A.M. Lila

Research Institute of Rheumatology named after V.A. Nasonova, Moscow

As life expectancy and the proportion of elderly people in the general population increase, understanding how aging contributes to chronic diseases development is becoming a public health priority. This article discusses current views on the mechanisms of aging, including the inflammaging hypothesis by Claudio Franceschi in 2000, according to which the aging of many organisms, including human, is accompanied by an increase in inflammatory markers level in the blood, cells and tissues. The authors consider in detail the risk factors and causes of inflammaging: cytokine hypothesis, free radical hypothesis, genetic predisposition, cellular aging, autophagy, visceral obesity, age-related changes in the microbiota and intestinal permeability. Aging is one of the most significant risk factors for osteoarthritis. The major treatment tactics for osteoarthritis is combination therapy (medication and non-medication), aimed at suppressing both the systemic and topical inflammatory process. From  this point of view, the method for the treatment of osteoarthritis based on the principles of bioregulatory system medicine can be quite justified. Bioregulatory medicine is based on the idea of the human body as a multi-stage and multi-level regulatory network, an integral property of which is self-regulation.

Keywords: life expectancy, inflammaging, osteoarthritis, bioregulatory medicine, multimorbidity, Traumeel C, Zeel T.

For citation: Zotkin E.G., Dydykina I.S., Lila A.M. Inflammaging, age-related diseases and osteoarthritis. RMJ. 2020;7:33–38.