Table 4.

Comparison of ageing-related differences between mice and humans

Organism	Human	Mouse
Life span	Life expectancy is at least 81 years in several countries, with an increase by 2–3 months every year without any indication of a slow-down (Global Burden of Disease Study 2015)	Life span between 2–3 years depending on strain (Yuan et al. 2011)
Brain volume loss	Significant brain volume loss associated both with normal and pathological ageing, although it is exacerbated in pathological conditions (Schuff et al. 2012)	Total brain size increases with age in wild-type mice (Maheswaran et al. 2009)
Microglial morphology	Primed microglia with greater immunoreactivity Dystrophic microglia with fragmented processes (Streit et al. 2009)	Thickening and a deramification of microglial processes, with hypertrophy of the cell body (Hart et al. 2012)
Inflammatory profile	Increased expression of IL-1, IL6, TNF-α, TGFβ, chemokines, complement proteins, and TLRs (Lopez-Gonzalez et al. 2015)	Increased expression of cytokines and inflammatory mediators, in a pattern very similar to the human (Lopez-Gonzalez et al. 2015)