Ebola Outbreak in Congo Outpaces Containment Efforts: The World Health Organization and Africa CDC are calling for an urgent expansion of Ebola control efforts in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the outbreak has reached 4,053 confirmed cases and 1,850 deaths, making it the second deadliest Ebola outbreak on record. Officials say the epidemic is spreading across 51 health zones, with roughly 75 new cases reported daily. More than 70% of new infections are occurring among people not previously identified as contacts, raising concerns that transmission chains are being missed. The outbreak is caused by the rare Bundibugyo Ebola virus, prompting studies into whether the virus has mutated. WHO is also recommending that the Ervebo vaccine be evaluated in a phase 3 trial while Bundibugyo-specific vaccines remain in early-stage testing. (CIDRAP)
U.S. Measles Cases Reach Highest Level Since 1991: The U.S. measles outbreak continues to expand, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirming 94 new infections and bringing the 2026 total to 2,465 cases—the highest annual number since 1991. Pennsylvania accounted for 57 of the newest cases, while Utah has recorded 516 cases this year. The CDC is tracking 38 outbreaks nationwide, and all but 16 cases were acquired domestically. Children and teenagers account for most infections, and 93% of patients were either unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status. The surge is raising concerns that the United States could lose its measles elimination status, achieved in 2000. A CDC committee is reviewing transmission data this month before the Pan American Health Organization makes a determination in November. (CIDRAP)
Dementia Risk After 90 Still Differs By Sex And Race: A large, unusually diverse study of people over 90 suggests that dementia risk remains strongly shaped by sex, race and genetics even among those who reach extreme old age without cognitive impairment. Researchers following more than 800 participants in the LifeAfter90 cohort found women had roughly twice the dementia risk of men. Black participants had about 75% greater risk than Asian participants. The APOE2 gene variant remained strongly protective, reducing dementia risk by about 60%, while APOE4 produced a more complicated pattern: it was not associated with significantly higher incidence overall but increased risk among men and approximately doubled it among Black participants. Researchers now want to understand why some people survive decades with conventional risk factors yet remain cognitively healthy. (Medical Xpress)
Female Reproduction May Hold Important Clues To Longevity: Researchers at the Buck Institute are proposing a new framework for understanding why women live longer than men despite experiencing substantial chronic disease in later life. Their “Reproductive Resilience Hypothesis” argues that reproduction and longevity should not necessarily be viewed as competing biological processes. Instead, reproductive systems—particularly the ovary—may coordinate signals affecting metabolism, immunity, brain function and other organs throughout life. The researchers point to species such as naked mole rats and queen bees, in which highly reproductive females are also exceptionally long-lived. They propose that loss of reproductive resilience should be considered a sex-specific hallmark of aging and argue that studying female biology more intensively could reveal mechanisms capable of extending healthspan in both sexes. The proposal appears in Cell. (Medical Xpress)
Healthy Aging Reflects Lifestyle And Psychological Resilience: Lifestyle, cognitive reserve and psychological characteristics appear to influence healthy aging through partly distinct biological pathways, according to research involving 401 dementia-free adults ages 83 to 87. Researchers measured more than 120 blood biomarkers related to the central nervous system while assessing cognition, mental health, walking speed, lifestyle and traits including resilience, extraversion and secure attachment. Eight biomarkers were consistently associated with protective characteristics, including inflammatory, metabolic and neuronal proteins. Lifestyle measures correlated with molecules including IL-15 and GOT1, while psychological resilience showed inverse relationships with inflammatory markers. Interestingly, the biomarkers did not statistically explain—or mediate—the observed health benefits, suggesting that the relationship between behavior, psychology and successful aging is more complicated than a single biological pathway. The study appeared in GeroScience. (Springer Link)
Vascular Aging May Be Treatable Through Nitric Oxide Signaling: Targeting the nitric oxide–cGMP pathway could eventually offer a way to combat age-related vascular decline, according to a new GeroScience systematic review and meta-analysis. Researchers evaluated 13 animal studies testing anti-inflammatory drugs, phosphodiesterase inhibitors and soluble guanylate cyclase modulators. Across the studies, manipulating the pathway generally improved vascular function. Anti-inflammatory DMARDs produced particularly strong improvements in acetylcholine-induced vasorelaxation, while phosphodiesterase inhibitors improved some measures of vasodilation and microvascular perfusion. Soluble guanylate cyclase drugs also improved microvascular blood flow. The findings suggest different treatments may attack vascular aging at different levels, from inflammation and endothelial dysfunction upstream to smooth-muscle signaling downstream. However, study quality varied considerably, and the authors stress that these are preclinical findings requiring careful validation before translating them into human anti-aging therapies. (ResearchGate)
Calorie Restriction And Butyrate Improve Aging Rat Cognition: Combining metabolic and epigenetic interventions may help protect cognition during aging, although the benefits appear to differ between sexes. Researchers studying aged male and female rats tested lifelong calorie restriction together with sodium butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid that inhibits histone deacetylase enzymes. Aging impaired spatial learning, memory and cognitive flexibility, but both calorie restriction and sodium butyrate improved performance, with the combination generally producing stronger effects. Females consistently performed better than males. In females, lower triglycerides associated with calorie restriction predicted better memory and cognitive flexibility, while lower insulin predicted learning improvements. In males, sodium butyrate was particularly associated with improved spatial learning. Butyrate also increased hippocampal histone H3 acetylation. Researchers caution that translating these animal findings into human longevity interventions will require substantially more research. (Nature)
Older Adults Benefited From Exercise Delivered By Video: Home exercise supervised through ordinary videoconferencing may improve physical function and reduce frailty in older adults, according to a study published in npj Aging. Fifty people averaging about 73 years old completed physical testing three months apart; 36 participated in a 12-week multicomponent adapted physical-activity program while 14 served as controls. Researchers measured walking, balance, sit-to-stand performance, mobility, knee-extension strength and muscle power. The intervention significantly improved maximal knee-extensor power, Timed-Up-and-Go performance and a composite physical-performance score derived partly from sensors embedded in smart glasses. Participants also shifted toward better functional classifications, and none remained classified as frail following the program. Adherence was high and no adverse events were reported, suggesting remote supervised exercise could increase access to healthy-aging programs. (ResearchGate)
A Longevity Gene Did Not Protect Aging Mice From Hearing Loss: A genetic intervention that improves several measures of healthspan and lifespan in mice surprisingly failed to prevent age-related hearing loss. Scientists studied mice engineered to express the naked mole rat version of hyaluronan synthase 2, which generates very-high-molecular-mass hyaluronan. Previous work showed these animals experience reduced inflammaging, improved healthspan and increased longevity. Researchers therefore tested whether they would also retain better hearing. They did not. Auditory brainstem measurements showed substantial hearing deterioration between three and 12 months in both genetically modified and control mice despite confirmed expression of the naked mole rat gene in cochlear tissue. The result is important because calorie restriction can reduce hearing loss in the same mouse strain, suggesting interventions that extend lifespan may protect some organs without protecting others. (Frontiers)
Strength Training Shows A Longevity Sweet Spot: Roughly 90 to 120 minutes of strength training per week was associated with the lowest mortality risk in an analysis drawing on nearly 150,000 participants from three long-running U.S. health studies. Over as much as three decades of follow-up, almost 36,000 participants died. Compared with people reporting no strength training, those doing around one-and-a-half to two hours weekly had approximately 13% lower all-cause mortality, 19% lower cardiovascular mortality and 27% lower mortality from neurological diseases, primarily dementia. Doing substantially more strength training produced little additional benefit. The strongest association appeared when resistance work was combined with aerobic exercise: people meeting aerobic recommendations while also performing one to two hours of strength training had roughly 45% lower mortality. The observational design means the study cannot establish causation. (ScienceDaily)
Aging Bodies May Be Less Able To Defend Against Extreme Heat: Researchers are gaining a clearer picture of why extreme heat becomes particularly dangerous with age. Evidence reviewed by scientists studying human thermoregulation suggests internal body temperature rises progressively more during equivalent heat exposure as people grow older—by approximately 0.1°C for every decade of age in some experiments. That could leave a 90-year-old nearly 0.7°C hotter internally than a 20-year-old facing identical conditions. The problem reflects declining physiological defenses: sweating begins falling from roughly age 40 onward, while the ability of skin blood vessels to dilate and release heat also deteriorates. These changes help explain the disproportionate cardiovascular and kidney complications experienced by older adults during heatwaves. Researchers are now investigating whether heat acclimation and other interventions can restore some of the lost thermoregulatory capacity. (Medical Xpress)
Machine Learning Maps Diets To Longevity And Heart Risk: Researchers are applying network science to nutrition in an attempt to understand how combinations of foods—not individual ingredients—relate to longevity. Using nationally representative Canadian dietary data linked with health records, scientists modeled food groups as interconnected nodes, allowing machine-learning methods to identify dietary communities and relationships that conventional dietary scores might miss. They then examined how those networks corresponded with cardiovascular events, mortality and years of life expectancy lost. The approach recognizes that people rarely consume foods independently: coffee might accompany toast, eggs and butter, while fruit may cluster with yogurt and whole grains. Researchers argue that analyzing these relationships could provide a more realistic representation of human diets and eventually improve nutrition guidance. Because the study is observational, however, dietary networks indicate associations rather than proving particular food combinations extend life. (Medical Xpress)