Cellular senescence in aging mucosal tissues is accentuated by periodontitis

Understanding the biologic mechanisms that cause declines in cellular, tissue, and organ functions is a strategy to enhance a healthy aging process. The biology of aging is impacted by both environmental and genetic factors that pre-dispose to variation in the rate of senescence across the population, with extensive variation in aging effects at the individual subject level. These findings are consistent with broader health data demonstrating that aging is accompanied by increased susceptibility to autoimmune, infectious, and inflammatory diseases, including periodontitis. The interdisciplinary implementation of investigations in geroscience addresses aging in the context of chronic age-related diseases and geriatric syndromes. A component aspect underlying these interrelationships is the evolving area of biologic aging to better describe and predict an individual rate of senescence based upon arrays of intrinsic and extrinsic variables that could more effectively model the kinetics of appearance and progression of age-related diseases. This has led to evolving strategies for the development of geroprotective and senolytic therapeutics to enhance healthy aging. This report provides data regarding cellular senescence patterns in gingival tissues with healthy aging and periodontitis. It also proposes that this chronic widespread disease may not simply reflect aging processes by also being a detrimental factor for “gerovulnerability” that should advance new insights into the importance of prevention/treatment of periodontitis with the overall composite of healthy aging strategies.