“Inflammaging” is far from being a household word now but, thanks to advances in cancer research, it apparently isn’t destined for obscurity much longer.

Anyone being affected directly or indirectly by cancer needs to familiarize himself or herself regarding what is happening on the inflammaging front and recognize the good judgment of staying tuned for information on more developments, going forward.

Meanwhile, no one ever knows if or when that dreaded disease might impact one’s life.

What is particularly interesting about the research being conducted regarding the inflammaging condition are the long-existing “puzzle pieces” that are at the center of the medical sleuthing currently underway.

According to an article published in the June 4 Wall Street Journal, “researchers are testing whether existing anti-inflammatory medications usually used to fight rheumatoid arthritis or allergy conditions like asthma or eczema can slow cancer in older patients. They are also searching for new drugs.”

The article, headlined “How ‘inflammaging’ drives cancer — and points researchers to treatments” — explains that “inflammation is the immune system’s reaction to a threat. Immune cells circulate in the body, attacking invaders such as viruses and cancer and calling for backup — more immune cells — when necessary. Working correctly, they can beat back COVID-19 or heal a cut on the finger. But the immune system can also overreact, fueling inflammation that gets in the way of healing or leads to disease. It misfires like this more as people age.”

Dr. Thomas Marron, a thoracic medical oncologist who heads the early-phase trials unit at the Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Institute in New York City, was quoted by the Journal as saying “the body is just basically like a flower bed primed to grow cancer as you get older.”

That’s not a happy thought as older people — especially — celebrate another birthday.

Dr. Miriam Merad, director of the Marc and Jennifer Lipschultz Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai, told the Journal that “a big focus … right now is to separate beneficial inflammation, the one that protects us from microbes and from tumors, from the pathogenic inflammation that is enhancing cancer progression, promoting atherosclerosis, promoting damage in the older brain.”

Merad, who has spent years examining malignant tumors in an effort to find out why people over age 50 account for 90% of cancer diagnoses in the United States, said studies by she and her research team at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, have revealed an answer that heretofore had been buried within the aging immune system.

“Their studies of individual immune cells in human lung tumors, as well as in old mice, have revealed how chronic, or pathogenic, inflammation in older people — dubbed inflammaging — interferes with the immune system and fuels cancer growth,” the Journal said.

More and more in recent years, people following progress in the fight against cancer have been hearing how immunotherapies are being used in trying to rev up the immune system to attack tumors.

“The common wisdom is that we want to ramp up inflammation as much as possible so that inflammation can be harnessed by the immune system to kill the cancer,” said Dr. Andy Minn, who in August is scheduled to become chair of a new immuno-oncology program at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

“The blind spot has been that there are different types of inflammation,” he continued.

Hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, the current research will produce results that will help make the thought of growing older much less foreboding.