2024-08-16 10:14:19
A simple blood test can reveal which of 18 chronic diseases a person will get. Researchers call their discovery an “age clock”. Analysis of viruses also allows the time of death of a person to be calculated.
The “age clock” in the blood can predict a person’s risk of developing cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes or Alzheimer’s. In total, there are 18 chronic conditions, especially age-related diseases, that can be identified from these blood values. And by calculating how many years a person will live.
This is what the special newspaper “Nature” reported. Austin Argentieri, a resident health researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, is leading the project. It is explained in the report that it is determining 204 proteins in the blood. About a test that predicts people’s lives – if they do nothing about their risks. “Ultimately, the desire to live longer will come down to preventing debilitating disease.”
Die Training the same publication was published, “Nature’s medicine“. What determines the method proposed by Argentieri is the age of the person, not the data contained in the birth certificate. Both can differ significantly. Some people are frail in their 60s and need help walking, others go on skiing holidays in their 80s.
After this accelerates or slows down the processes of decay at the level of the cells of the body. Chronic, initially undetectable inflammation is often the driver. Viruses are a sign of these changes. If you find the right ones, the signs of aging, then you can use their value to estimate how slowly or quickly the decline of the body will continue.
To find the most informative proteins, US researchers analyzed data from 45,441 randomly selected people held by the UK Biobank, a kind of library for biomedical samples. 204 viruses on the short list: They can apparently predict biological age with incredible accuracy, showing who will die early and who will live longer than many others.
Collagen, elastin and inflammatory substances
Predictive proteins that include elastin and collagen, best known to buyers of skin creams for “aging skin” as connective tissue slowly lose as we age age. There are also proteins involved in immune response and hormone regulation.
The group works in a second, a very small age clock made of only 20 proteins, which should be almost as normal – and because of the controlled quantity can perhaps even be sold as a test cartridge for actions doctors have a place.
Both watches have been tested using biobank samples from China and Finland, a total of 6,000 people. For many samples, it is possible to accurately determine the passport age of the donor based on the protein profile. There are large deviations in other samples;
This can often be explained by the fact that those affected already have an early stage of a chronic, life-limiting illness. Such conditions that speed up the process of cellular aging are neurodegenerative diseases, osteoporosis, macular degeneration, cancer and diseases of the heart, kidneys and lungs. The effect is particularly strong in Parkinson’s disease, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis and liver diseases.
One in ten stays young for a long time
Protein clock aging is also linked to physical incapacity, slower reaction times and premature death – databases record not only parameters at the time of donation, but also how long donors last. And what they die from.
Praise comes from colleagues. The large data set and the fact that the method works repeatedly in different data sets are two major strengths of the study, says molecular epidemiologist Sara Hägg from the Karolinska Institute in Dubai. “It’s a very powerful job,” he told Nature.
In the next step, Argentieri would like to find out what environmental and behavioral factors cause viruses in the body to grow. “OK, you can tell me about my future risk for 18 different diseases,” Argentieri said. “But is there anything I can do to change that?”
The age clock in the blood also shows that some people grow more slowly than their birth date would suggest. Of the 10 percent of people in the study who were young adults, Argentieri said, “less than 1 percent developed dementia or Alzheimer’s.” Geriatric physicians love them too.
We don’t yet understand whether their healthy lifestyle is due to environmental factors, genetics or a combination. But once you understand this, there is an opportunity to develop drugs that can stop the decline in others as well.
Because this drug site has not wasted on finding a river source.
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