Editorial: Resilience in Aging

LAURA HAYNES^1*Richard C Siow²CONSUELO BORRAS³Kieran Reid⁴Jianhua Zhang⁵Anshu Agrawal⁶

• ¹UConn Center on Aging, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, United States
• ²Faculty of Life Sciences & Medicine, King’s College London, London, United Kingdom
• ³MiniAging Research Group. Department of Physiology. Faculty of Medicine, University of Valencia., Valencia, Spain
• ⁴Laboratory of Exercise Physiology and Physical Performance, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School,, Boston, United States
• ⁵Dept Pathology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, United States
• ⁶Division of Basic and Clinical Immunology, Department of Medicine, University of California Irvine, Irvine, United States

In this editorial, we discuss contributions to the research topic of Resilience in Aging. Resilience refers to the capacity to recover from stress and restore physiological homeostasis. Importantly, resilience steadily declines with aging, and older individuals exhibit a significantly reduced ability to return to homeostasis following a stressor, which can result in a myriad of undesirable outcomes, including the inability to live independently. The overall goal of this research topic is to explore the role that resilience plays in all aspects of aging, from the molecular level to the ability of older adults to recover from a stressor.The review article by Cosarderelioglu and colleagues (https://doi.org/10.3389/fragi.2025.1520842) focuses on frailty and resilience, exploring their relationship and differences. They provide an extensive overview of this topic and write that while frailty and resilience are two key complementary concepts in aging research that are related, they represent distinct perspectives on how older adults respond to stress. Frailty mostly defines a decline in physical systems, while resilience has a broader context, also including mental health, coping strategies, social connections, and emotional well-being. Physical resilience, including freedom from agerelated sarcopenia, plays an important role in how older adults function and whether they can remain living independently. Handajani et al. (https://doi.org/10.3389/fragi.2024.1307762) present a systematic review and meta-analysis of probiotic supplementation and its impact on sarcopenia in older adults. Their analysis revealed that probiotic supplementation significantly improved muscle mass and strength in older adults, suggesting a promising avenue for enhancing physical resilience.Beyond physical function, resilience is also shaped by cellular and molecular processes. One key factor is cellular senescence, which increases the burden of dysfunctional cells and promotes chronic systemic inflammation. In their article, Liao and colleagues (https://doi.org/10.3389/fragi.2025.1505063) discuss the role of mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization (MOMP) in the development of senescence. This insight is crucial, as mounting evidence links cellular senescence to both the aging process and a spectrum of chronic age-related diseases, collectively undermining physiological resilience. Importantly, they discuss how targeting MOMP could alleviate the detrimental aspects of senescence, such as enhanced inflammation, without compromising the beneficial aspects, including tumor suppression. To further explore resilience and senescence, Wrona et al. (https://doi.org/10.3389/fragi.2024.1490302) present a review of how immunosenescence and inflammaging impact immune resilience. It is well known that age-related changes in immunity, often referred to as immunosenescence, contribute to an increased susceptibility to infections in older adults; however, the factors driving these changes are still not well understood. In this article, the authors discuss the roles that both intrinsic and extrinsic factors play in immune aging and how these are related to the overall resilience of the immune system.The COVID-19 pandemic presented unprecedented challenges to healthcare systems and individuals worldwide, with caregivers facing particularly intense pressures during this crisis. The original research article