UV irradiation on aging and aging interventions Biomedical Paper (Research Paper Sample)

UV irradiation on aging and aging interventions
Introduction:
Intrinsic aging is a natural and irreversible process that primarily due to the shortening of telomeres, the special end structure on chromosome1. As the lifespan has been increasing over the world, the appearance of the skin has brought to more people’s concern. Skin aging can be influenced by various factors, including genetics, oxidative stress (UV light exposure, deleterious free radicals), anxiety, hormones. People do not seem to attach any importance to the everyday sunlight exposure, which, however, is the most contributing factor of aging, up to 80% of the visible skin aging2. Besides skin aging, UV light can also cause post-synthetically damage to majority of the lens protein which can lead to cataractous lens3.
As the representation of sunlight, ultraviolet (UV) contains approximately 10% of total electromagnetic radiation output from the sun4. Unlike the simple heating effects, the biological effects of UV are significant, and this type of radiation can interact with organic molecules4. UV light can be separated to UV-A (320 - 400nm) and higher energetic UV-B (290 - 320nm)5. UV-B depends on the season and daytime, whereas UV-A is relatively constant throughout the year and can penetrate well through clouds and glasses5. Both UV-A and UV-B radiation can give rise to reactive oxygen species (ROS) and gene mutation, alteration that can have negative effect on aging6. UV-B can be completely absorbed in the epidermis, while UV-A can penetrate to the dermis5. As one of the organic life forms on earth, human aging is inevitable, and it represents the process during which deleterious functional changes accumulate in organisms as a result of the passage of time. According to these, the UV radiation is playing an important role in the process of human cell ageing. The main purpose of this paper is to discuss in detail how UV radiation affects human cell aging in appearance and function and the related molecular pathways; and the interventions that aim to eliminate or limit the exposure of sunlight, as well as how the aging effect can, to some extent, be protected by molecular compound to alleviate the effect of the UV light.