Midlife Brain Aging Linked to Immune Cell Changes and Blood-Brain Barrier Decline
A study funded by the National Institutes of Health has identified significant changes in the immune cell landscape of the hippocampus during midlife, which may contribute to neuroinflammation and neurodegenerative diseases. Conducted by researchers from the University of California, San Diego, the New York Genome Center, and the University of California, Irvine, the study analyzed postmortem hippocampal tissue from adults aged 20 to 95. The findings revealed a decline in the brain's primary immune cells, microglia, from age 50 to 75, replaced by cells with inflammatory signatures similar to peripheral blood-derived immune cells. Additionally, the protective blood-brain barrier deteriorated with age, and there was a widespread disruption of genome architecture across brain cell types. 
