A group of scientists have found clues to how aging impacts chronic neuroinflammation commonly observed in neurodegenerative disease. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and its findings are reported on in a press release.

The researchers were from the University of California, San Diego, the New York Genome Center and the University of California, Irvine. They assessed hippocampal tissue from 40 patients aged 20-95 who had passed away. All participants were considered neurologically healthy.

They found that the microglia may rapidly decline during midlife. This shift causes the immune cells to be replaced by “cells with elevated inflammatory signatures and other features resembling characteristics of peripheral blood-derived immune cells.” This means that microglia may not renew as previously thought. These findings were uncovered using gene expression and “more advanced techniques to analyze the genome’s 3D architecture and array of chemical modifications, called the epigenome.”

Additionally, they found that the cells that help protect the blood-brain barrier could degenerate with age. Aging was associated with “a widespread and coordinated disruption of genome architecture.” The authors noted that more studies are needed to confirm and better understand these findings.