12th World Congress on Targeting Microbiota 2025

The Gut Microbiome and Ageing Trajectories: From Frailty to Healthy Longevity

The Gut Microbiome and Ageing Trajectories From Frailty to Healthy Longevity

A new review published in Nature Reviews Endocrinology examines how the gut microbiome may influence the way individuals age and why ageing trajectories differ so widely between people.

Led by Prof. Andrea Ticinesi, together with Stefania Maggi, Antonio Nouvenne, Giovanni Zuliani, and senior author Claudio Franceschi, the paper presents the gut microbiome as a dynamic ecosystem shaped throughout life by diet, lifestyle, medications, environment, and host biology.

The authors describe how ageing is often accompanied by a progressive reconfiguration of gut microbial communities. This process can interact with gastrointestinal cellular senescence and immune ageing, increasing antigenic stimulation and contributing to inflammageing, frailty, and age-related diseases.

Importantly, the review emphasizes that there is no single "healthy ageing microbiome." Microbial profiles vary considerably between individuals and populations. Interestingly, centenarians appear to retain specific microbial signatures with adaptive and anti-inflammatory properties, suggesting that microbiome resilience may contribute to exceptional longevity.

The paper also highlights the translational potential of microbiome-based strategies, including dietary interventions, physical activity, probiotics, prebiotics, food-derived bioactive compounds, and microbiome profiling.

The authors conclude that future interventions will likely need to be personalized, integrating microbiome data with clinical and metabolic information to better predict ageing trajectories and identify individuals at risk of frailty.

This review moves the field beyond simple associations and positions the gut microbiome as an important component of preventive and longevity medicine.

These questions and perspectives will be central to discussions at both: