Echoes of William Gowers’s concept of abiotrophy

ABSTRACT

Among William Gowers’s many contributions to neurology, the concept of abiotrophy (“an essential failure of vitality”) has been relatively overlooked. In this article, we review the echoes of Gowers’s concept in neurology, ophthalmology, and aging research. We also argue that abiotrophy is broader than both heredodegeneration and neurodegeneration. Unlike the common view that it simply means premature aging, abiotrophy currently can be understood as a progressive degenerative process of a mature specialized tissue, which is nonsynchronous with normal aging and may affect organs or systems early in life, resulting from the age-dependent effects of genetic mutations or variants, even if environmental factors may also causally contribute to the process. Although the term has largely fallen out of use, there are likely to be everlasting echoes of Gowers’s concept, through which he is to be considered a source of the modern thinking about the etiology and nosology of neurological diseases.

KEYWORDS:

• Abiotrophy
• aging
• aging-related diseases
• complex etiology
• evolutionary theory of aging
• genetics
• heredodegeneration
• neurodegeneration

Acknowledgments

We thank an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments that led to relevant additions to the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Gilberto Levy

Gilberto Levy reviewed the literature and conceptualized and wrote the manuscript. Bruce Levin revised the manuscript for intellectual content. Eliasz Engelhardt contributed to the review and revised the manuscript for intellectual content.