White Paper on Nutrition Sensing and Ageing.

Abstract

Ageing, which is defined as the progressive deterioration of physiological functions, is an inevitable part of the lifecycle. Nevertheless, its progress is believed to be influenced by modifiable factors, one of the most important being dietary intake. Like many other systems within the human body, detection of nutrients (defined as nutrition sensing), their metabolism, and the body's response to nutrients may change with ageing. There is compelling evidence to suggest that nutrition sensing mechanisms can become dysregulated in certain ageing adults, which can lead to increased morbidity and mortality. However, there is still much to unravel in nutrition sensing and its impact on ageing on multiple levels from molecular signalling to the food environment. We hypothesise that nutrition sensing mechanisms play an important role in the ageing process. To this end, we formed the Ageing and Nutrition Sensing Network to bring together leading multi-disciplinary researchers and early career researchers with expertise across ageing, cell biology, nutrition, epidemiology, and policy. The network aims to address the priority area of health span and quality of life in older age. As a consortium, we defined nutrition sensing and identified five key challenges to be addressed to advance the field of nutrition sensing and ageing. This resulted in the development of four main projects, each one embracing multidisciplinary working and investigating nutrition sensing and ageing from different perspectives. Here we describe our network, our projects, and how we plan to incorporate our findings to promote healthy ageing from science and industry to policy.