Читать книгу General system theory of aging. Special role of the immune system - V. I. Dontsov - Страница 3

According to WHO, the level of health and life expectancy of the population are among the central indicators of the level and quality of life in the country. However, the increase in life expectancy, which is universally observed in all civilized countries, poses a serious problem associated with a simultaneous decrease in the birth rate, this is a worldwide trend of aging of the population. The problem of aging is occupied by the most diverse areas of theoretical science and their practical sections. General biology considers the emergence and evolution of ontogenesis, the species life span, the ecology of species and the Earth’s overall ecosystem.

Demography develops population gerontology, especially the aging of various population groups and the change in mortality in different historical epochs. Molecular biology, genetics, physiology, biochemistry, and histology have thoroughly studied all the features of the manifestation of aging at the level of molecules, genes, cells, tissues and organs, as well as changes in the systemic relationships of organs and tissues in the whole organism throughout life. Geriatrics studies in detail the course and treatment of diseases in the elderly.

However, it is philosophy, its methodological section – gnoseology, and the modern methodological scientific principle – system analysis that plays a leading role in questions about the essence of life and death, constant movement and self-renewal, and also in methodological questions about the essence and cause of the aging phenomenon and the fundamental possibility of overcoming it, about the future of man as a race with global interventions in the biological nature of man and in other generally significant, human-common problems.

Knowledge of philosophy and methodology eliminates the typical flaws characteristic of modern representatives of highly specialized science, first of all, of replacing the essence of aging with its mechanisms, which led to the unrestrained reproduction of the “theories” of aging.

Practical success is always based on new scientific knowledge and theoretical work, which is especially important for the science of aging. In recent years, quite a lot of fundamental work has appeared on molecular, genetic, cellular manifestations of aging, and ideas about the role of apoptosis, telomerase and other relatively new scientific data on cellular processes in aging processes are being exaggerated. At the same time, no clear idea of aging as a single process affecting the whole organism is formed. It is not clear how important the studied mechanisms of aging are for the aging of the whole organism, how they interact with each other and how important they are.

In this monograph, using the system analysis methodology, to consider the aging process as a whole as a phenomenon typical of all living things, as well as to highlight the most important aging processes and mechanisms for mammals and humans first of all.

We also present a new look at the main mechanisms of aging associated with the development of regulatory models of aging and specifying their manifestation – through the immune mechanisms, and the immune mechanisms here act in a specific form – as regulators of the proliferative activity of somatic cells, which is pronounced decreases with age, defining age-related atrophy of tissues – this is a new trend in immunobiology, in which domestic scientists are ahead in the world.

The monograph makes it possible in general to create a general idea of aging, its causes and main mechanisms, and to evaluate the possibilities and ways of influencing, having a clear idea about the points of application and the possible effectiveness of effects, which is always the main complexity of modern theories and practical impacts on aging.