Biomarkers of Aging: From Cellular Senescence to Age-Associated Diseases

The major common risk factor of degenerative diseases is the age of the person. For a long time, the calendrical age was used to calculate the risk to develop a disease or to have a negative outcome. Indeed, calculated by the Gompertz survival function, mortality rate increases exponentially with time. Older patients have a higher risk to get a worse outcome in comparison to younger patients. The plasticity of stem cells is reduced with age. Whereas all these data seem to fit on the basis of cohorts, on the level of individuals, age, as calculated time, is a bad predictor. We all know fit people at the age of 80 and old people at the age of 70. Therefore, one needs a better calculation of the age of a person, the so-called biological age. This age should be analysed using biomarkers of aging. In contrast to the calendrical age, the biological age can be influenced by the environment and our behaviour. The collection of review and primary research papers in this special issue of Oxidative Medicine and Cellular Longevity covers a wide range of topics from mechanisms of cellular aging to nutritional and lifestyle interventions in aging and age-associated conditions