Inflammation and Immune System Activation in Aging: A Mathematical Approach

Nikas, Jason B.

In order to study the process of human normal aging, this study focuses on the most vulnerable target of that process, namely, the hippocampus. Given the long, gradual course of the normal aging process, I arbitrarily defined the boundaries of the two groups as follows: 1) Old subjects (O) with age $ 60 years and 2) Young subjects (Y) with age # 45 years. This 15-yr age gap, I theorized, would accentuate the contrast between the two groups in connection with this otherwise continuous and overlapping process. I analyzed the global gene expression data from post-mortem hippocampal tissue (harvested from the body of the hippocampus at the level of the lateral geniculate nucleus) of 25 old and 15 young cognitively intact human subjects, posted at the Gene Expression Omnibus (GSE11882) 5 . Demographical information pertaining to all 40 subjects is shown in Supplementary Table 1 .