Pre-disease processes associated with aging as a target for intervening aging progression into disease

Aging is the single most prominent risk factor for many age-related diseases, such as neurodegenerative disease, cancer, and cardiovascular diseases. While one research avenue is to prevent, halt, or even reverse aging process per se, the other avenue is to prevent or halt the progress of the aging process into disease as within a branch of geroscience. We propose that in the latter case, the interactions between normal aging process and environmental factors can give rise to precursors for developing into age-related pathologies, yet not committed to progression into any irreversible diseases. The environmental factors can be either within microenvironments (e.g. pro-inflammatory factors) surrounding cells, tissues and organs or derived from macro environments (e.g. temperature, pathogens and chemicals) external to the organisms. This precursor state may be reverted back to normal healthy aging if the environmental factors are beneficial to organisms. However, this precursor state may be progressed into age-related disease if the environmental factors are detrimental to organisms. It is during this state that effective intervention can be implemented. We will present examples of these states, including the one for neurodegenerative disorders and possible interventions. In such case, axonal degeneration is a potential precursors developing into neurodegenerative disorders. This “precursors” hypothesis can be tested and eventually guide the intervention on ageing-diseases progression.