Keeping inflammation balanced may slow ageing

Dr. José Pedro Castro, a researcher at the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health at the University of Porto, is developing a concept he calls ‘inflammatory fidelity’: the ability of the body to maintain a healthy, balanced inflammatory homeostasis. The researcher argues that this balance becomes disrupted with age, contributing to a wide range of age-related diseases.

When the immune system loses its precision

Inflammation is essential. It clears infections, repairs tissue and coordinates immune responses. The problem is not inflammation itself but the loss of precision in how it is switched on and off. Castro describes this as a breakdown in inflammatory fidelity: some inflammatory processes become chronically active without a clear trigger, while targeted responses to real threats weaken.

This pattern is related to what researchers call inflammaging, the low-grade, chronic inflammation associated with biological ageing. Castro’s contribution is to frame this not just as inflammation going up, but as a loss of fine-grained control in both directions.

From one protein to the whole system

Castro’s career illustrates a broader shift in ageing research. He began studying single proteins in T cells and now works with multi-omics, techniques that simultaneously analyse gene expression, DNA methylation and protein profiles across multiple tissues. Ageing, he argues, cannot be explained by a single pathway but by the interaction of dozens of changes at once.

It is worth noting that the concept of inflammatory fidelity has not yet been published as a peer-reviewed paper. Castro presented it at Longevity Summit Dublin as an emerging conceptual framework. Whether future therapies can precisely restore inflammatory balance without disrupting necessary immune functions remains an open question.

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