Physical Activity and Nutrition INfluences in Ageing: Current Findings from the PANINI Project

Background: The ageing of the population is a global challenge and the period of life spent in good health, although increasing, is not keeping pace with lifespan. Consequently, understanding the important factors that contribute to healthy ageing and validating interventions and influencing policy to promote healthy ageing are vital research priorities. Method: The PANINI project is a collaboration of 20 partners across Europe examining the influence of physical activity and nutrition in ageing. Methods utilised encompass the biological to the social, from genetics to the influence of social context. For example, epigenetic, immunological, and psychological assessments, and nutritional and sports science-based interventions have been used among older adults, as well as mathematical modelling and epidemiology. The projects are multi-disciplinary and examine health outcomes in ageing from a range of perspectives. Results: The results discussed here are those emerging thus far in PANINI from 11 distinct programmes of research within PANINI as well as projects cross-cutting the network. New approaches, and the latest results are discussed. Conclusions: The PANINI project has been addressing the impact of physical activity and nutrition on healthy ageing from diverse but interlinked perspectives. It emphasises the importance of using standardized measures and the advantages of combining data to compare biomarkers and interventions across different settings and typologies of older adults. As the projects conclude, the current results and final data will form part of a shared dataset, which will be made open access for other researchers into ageing processes.On behalf of the PANINI Consortiu

A multi-element psychosocial intervention for early psychosis (GET UP PIANO TRIAL) conducted in a catchment area of 10 million inhabitants: study protocol for a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial

Multi-element interventions for first-episode psychosis (FEP) are promising, but have mostly been conducted in non-epidemiologically representative samples, thereby raising the risk of underestimating the complexities involved in treating FEP in 'real-world' services

Presentation : Development of an age-specific genome-scale model of skeletal muscle metabolism

Skeletal myocytes are among the most metabolically active cell types, implicated in nutrient balance, contributing to the insulin-stimulated clearance of glucose from the blood, and secreting myokines that contribute in regulating inflammation and the ageing process. The loss of muscle mass and strength with age (sarcopenia), is a risk factor for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, it increases the risk of falls, of developing frailty and disabilities, and results in an impairment in the quality of life and autonomy of an individual. An active lifestyle is the most immediate and accessible treatment to prevent sarcopenia, with a considerable impact on the ageing process: PANINI is a European Training Network whose aim is understanding how lifestyle factors can influence healthy ageing. In this context, we present the first age-specific genome-scale metabolic model of the skeletal muscle, a mathematical representation of the myocyte metabolic network in the elderly, built using RECON2, the human metabolic reconstruction, and gene expression data, gathered from older adults' muscle tissue biopsies. This model will be used to analyze patient-specific data for potential mechanisms able to explain the different ageing paces of different individuals and to investigate the effectiveness of different nutritional and physical exercise regimes in stimulating post-exercise protein synthesis, which is often impaired in the elderly. The aim is to identify an optimal and personalized lifestyle change intervention able to prevent the onset of sarcopenia

A distance measure for heterogeneity using genome scale metabolic networks

Physiological differences in the aging process are inherently present in a population, and increase with age, affecting the risk of developing disabilities and age-related diseases [1]. Patient-Derived Genome-Scale Metabolic Models (PD-GSMM) are built from human GSMM and experimental data, mostly transcriptomics and proteomics, belonging to single individuals. Personalized genome scale models have recently been used to plan individualized anti-cancer therapies [2], and to address the variability among cancer patients, identifying key genes involved in tumour growth [3]. Despite their success in cancer metabolism, is still not clear the extent to which PD-GSMs are representations of individual metabolic features in physiological conditions, and how successful such models are in capturing inter-individual heterogeneity when dealing with subtler phenotypes such as ageing. Starting from microarray datasets of younger and older adults’ skeletal muscle gene expression, we developed the first collection of patient-derived genome scale metabolic models of ageing individuals' myocytes, and used a data science approach to define a distance metric and assess the variability between metabolic models. This research is part of the PANINI project (Physical Activity and Nutrition INfluences in Aging), and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon2020 programme, under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement 675003

Presentation : Development of an age-specific genome-scale model of skeletal muscle metabolism

Skeletal myocytes are among the most metabolically active cell types, implicated in nutrient balance, contributing to the insulin-stimulated clearance of glucose from the blood, and secreting myokines that contribute in regulating inflammation and the ageing process. The loss of muscle mass and strength with age (sarcopenia), is a risk factor for cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, it increases the risk of falls, of developing frailty and disabilities, and results in an impairment in the quality of life and autonomy of an individual.\u3cbr/\u3eAn active lifestyle is the most immediate and accessible treatment to prevent sarcopenia, with a considerable impact on the ageing process: PANINI is a European Training Network whose aim is understanding how lifestyle factors can influence healthy ageing.\u3cbr/\u3e\u3cbr/\u3eIn this context, we present the first age-specific genome-scale metabolic model of the skeletal muscle, a mathematical representation of the myocyte metabolic network in the elderly, built using RECON2, the human metabolic reconstruction, and gene expression data, gathered from older adults' muscle tissue biopsies.\u3cbr/\u3eThis model will be used to analyze patient-specific data for potential mechanisms able to explain the different ageing paces of different individuals and to investigate the effectiveness of different nutritional and physical exercise regimes in stimulating post-exercise protein synthesis, which is often impaired in the elderly.\u3cbr/\u3eThe aim is to identify an optimal and personalized lifestyle change intervention able to prevent the onset of sarcopenia. \u3cbr/\u3e\u3cbr/\u3