Age Related Diseases
Diseases related with your older cat
1. The critical role of chronic inflammation and inflammaging.
It is now clearly established that inflammation causes age-related processes and results from those processes or both.
Aging is accompanied by a low-grade up-regulation of certain pro-inflammatory response called inflammaging
The aging of the immune system actually comes with an apparent paradox:
- A decrease in immune responsiveness to infection and other pathologies (hypo-responsiveness or immunosenescence).
- An increase in systemic inflammation (the first line of defense of the immune system), which can cause or aggravate degenerative diseases (hyper responsiveness or inflammaging).
Inflammaging plays a large role in the pathophysiology of age and chronic disease related functional decline. It is typified by a low grade inflammatory state.
The inflammation of aging has multiple origins, many of which are caused by natural aging processes.
FIGURE 1: Causes of inflammaging
2 Age related chronic diseases:
Many diseases common in older cats and animals have clear inflammatory components. The presence of a chronic inflammatory state creates an environment that predisposes an animal to the development of other inflammatory diseases. Inflammation in aging is both the cause and the result of the age related processes leading to chronic diseases.
The chronic inflammation that accompanies old age predispose a cat to host of chronic diseases with similar pathways (Figure 2):
FIGURE 2 : Inflammaging impact on senior cat health.
Most of those diseases can be prevented and their progression slowed down significantly.
