Longevity interventions temporally scale healthspan in Caenorhabditis elegans

Cyril Statzer; Peter Reichert; Jürg Dual; Collin Y Ewald

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.103983

Longevity interventions temporally scale healthspan in Caenorhabditis elegans

iScience. 2022 Feb 24;25(3):103983. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.103983. eCollection 2022 Mar 18.

Authors

Cyril Statzer¹, Peter Reichert², Jürg Dual², Collin Y Ewald¹

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of Extracellular Matrix Regeneration, Institute of Translational Medicine, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, ETH Zürich, Schwerzenbach CH-8603, Switzerland.
² Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, Institute for Mechanical Systems, Zürich CH-8092, Switzerland.

Abstract

Human centenarians and longevity mutants of model organisms show lower incidence rates of late-life morbidities than the average population. However, whether longevity is caused by a compression of the portion of life spent in a state of morbidity, i.e., "sickspan," is highly debated even in isogenic Caenorhabditis elegans. Here, we developed a microfluidic device that employs acoustophoretic force fields to quantify the maximum muscle strength and dynamic power in aging C. elegans. Together with different biomarkers for healthspan, we found a stochastic onset of morbidity, starting with a decline in dynamic muscle power and structural integrity, culminating in frailty. Surprisingly, we did not observe a compression of sickspan in longevity mutants but instead observed a temporal scaling of healthspan. Given the conservation of these longevity interventions, this raises the question of whether the healthspan of mammalian longevity interventions is also temporally scaled.

Keywords: Biological sciences; Biophysics; Physiology.