A study of people born within a year of each other has found major biological differences in how old they appear to be.
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The study on aging tracked 954 people from Dunedin, a city in New Zealand, for several years.
So as part of their regular reassessment of the study population at age 38 in 2011, the team measured the functions of kidneys, liver, lungs, metabolic and immune systems. Researchers studied several aspects ranging from the measurement of cholesterol to cardiorespiratory fitness, and the condition of the tiny blood vessels at the back of the eyes, which are a proxy for the brain’s blood vessels.
These analyses revealed that when at 38, the biological age of the participants appeared to be similar to individuals in their late 20s to those who were approaching 60.
Others were ageing as fast as three biological years per chronological year.
These biologically older adults scored lower on a variety of tests measuring physical and cognitive functions, they wrote in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Others aged as fast as three years for each chronological year. Right now we look at things like disease end points, new diagnoses, hospitalizations and death, but all are imperfect because they don’t give us a picture of the health of a whole person.
“There’s a great deal of environmental influence”, the study’s lead author, Dan Belsky of Duke University’s Center for Aging, said in a statement.
A new study on human ageing could open the door to affecting people’s life spans, a genetics professor says. It’s not yet been explained clearly how the speed of biological aging alters with all these measures.
The researchers found a variance of up to 30 years in the different participants’ biological age, although all were still free of any age-related disease.
The hope is that these biological ages can be defined more clearly and used as objective measures to test the effectiveness of anti-ageing therapies and treatments.
The group was analyzed for 12 years, from the age of 26 to 38. Researchers could pinpoint the ones that affect the aging process, which could result in the development of new anti-aging drugs. They invited students to view photos of the study participants and guess their ages. Research involving twins shows that only about 20 percent of aging can be linked to genetics, said Belsky.
“If we can identify why some people have more rapid biological aging, it may be possible to intervene and reduce the risks of complications and diseases related to aging”, said Leipzig, who was not involved in the study.
Although Associate professor Peter Dearden, from Otago University, was not directly involved in the study he said it had been hard to measure ageing in the past.
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The findings seem to suggest that minding your health and keeping diseases at bay could keep you looking and feeling young. But our measure of the pace of aging is a bit different, as it is based on aspects of organ function that are “hidden” inside young people who still feel and look healthy; it does not rely on observable behaviours such as smoking. “Otherwise, it’s a game of whack-a-mole”.
