![]() ![]() These biological age tests are marketed as premium wellness products, often with sleek websites, minimalist packaging and influencer endorsements on social media.Įlysium Health’s Index test. In recent years, these methods have led to an explosion in startups that aim to measure biological age for consumers. If that all sounds complex, it’s perhaps crystalized by the name Horvath gave his second-generation clock: GrimAge, as in the Grim Reaper. That data helps the clocks to identify unhealthy ageing with greater precision – and, Horvath suggests, “predict time to death”. Since then, Horvath and other scientists have developed more accurate clocks, based on data collected from the blood samples of the same group of people over many decades. The result was a formula able to estimate age across a human’s entire life course, from fetus to old age. Horvath’s clock tracks several hundreds of these locations. It’s really millions of locations of DNA,” he said. “As we age, certain parts of the DNA gain methylation and other parts lose methylation. Horvath compared methylation to sand moving through an hourglass. In 2011, Horvath found patterns of DNA methylation could be used to accurately estimate human age. ![]() Horvath’s clock analyzes certain chemical changes to genetic material, a process called DNA methylation. Epigenetics is the study of how your environment changes the way your genes work. Horvath’s approach, called the “ epigenetic clock”, is considered by many scientists to be the gold standard. Some approaches even claim to determine mortality risk by scanning people’s eyes. Other approaches take blood samples and measure the presence of molecules that correlate with decreased bodily function. One approach focuses on the length of telomeres, which are protective structures on the ends of our chromosomes, that shorten every time a chromosome replicates – making them an approximate yardstick for biological ageing. “Researchers debate how to define it,” said Horvath. But the first step is to try to measure it, and that’s not straightforward. The hope is that understanding biological age can lead to new life-lengthening interventions. It is in some ways a tautology: if it wasn’t better, we wouldn’t call it biological age.” “Knowing how fast she is really ageing, it gives her a renewed sense of self and how she should live in the upcoming decade.”ĭr Steve Horvath, a 54-year-old UCLA professor who pioneered the first “clock” to indicate human ageing by examining chemical changes to DNA, told me that “biological age is a better predictor of morbidity risk than chronological age. “It was such a relief for her, because it gives her a newfound hope about life planning,” Chan said. “She looks like a 40-year-old!” he said.Ībout two months later, they got the results back: Ivy’s biological age was 43. But with her youthful looks, she still felt healthy. “She always talked about entering her 60s and how it’s a big step, and this is the start of fading away,” Chan told me. ![]() This review summarizes the current knowledge on biological age biomarkers, factors influencing biological aging, and antiaging interventions, with a focus on vascular aspects of the aging process and its cardiovascular disease related manifestations.Chan felt his mother, Ivy, who is 59 years old, would benefit from knowing her biological age because she was anxious about getting older. However, strategies to extend health span and life span require understanding of interindividual differences in age-dependent functional decline, known as biological aging. Studies in experimental models and humans have identified 9 highly interconnected hallmark processes driving mammalian aging. In a progressively aging population, it is essential to develop early-life biomarkers that efficiently identify individuals who are at high risk of developing accelerated vascular damage, with the ultimate goal of improving primary prevention and reducing the health care and socioeconomic impact of age-related cardiovascular disease. Aging is the main risk factor for vascular disease and ensuing cardiovascular and cerebrovascular events, the leading causes of death worldwide. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |