Billions of dollars are pouring into longevity biotechs, but measuring success is challenging, given how little is known about the biology of aging.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02560-9
I canāt open it. Any good!
Its paywalled. Can you read the entire article? Please post if you can.
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From the articleā¦
āYou can eliminate wrinkles but doing so merely decouples skin appearance as a biomarker for aging, and the causal structure of aging isnāt affected.ā As he adds: āLooking better doesnāt make you physiologically younger.ā The same could be true of many molecular biomarkers and the interventions that modify them. Such interventions might act downstream of the causal process ā the one that could really impact aging.
This is worth thinking about. How to know if changing blood markers or functional markers of age is changing true biological age? If I take a pain killer, and can move better as a result, am I young again? No. If I take niacin to boost my HDL, do I get an improved ASCVD outcome? No.
Thoughts?
And a new Nature article on biological clocks: (open access)
How quickly are you ageing? What molecular āclocksā can tell you about your health
Armed with an influx of cash and public enthusiasm, researchers are looking to improve how ageing is measured.
If the number of on-camera screams is any indication, Kim Kardashianās first encounter with epigenetics was a thrilling one.
The reality-television star and her family shrieked and squealed in the season finale of The Kardashians in Los Angeles, California, last July as they each learnt the results of a commercial blood test that purportedly assessed their ābiological agesā. Although Kardashian was 43, the placement of chemical markers on her DNA ā her āepigenetic profileā ā matched that of a 34-year-old, according to the test. Her body, moreover, was ageing 18% more slowly than most people of her age.
āYou should give yourself a pat on the back,ā said Matthew Dawson as he relayed the results. (Dawson is chief executive of TruDiagnostic in Lexington, Kentucky, the company that sells the test.)
On the other side of the country, neuropsychologist Terrie Moffitt says she was āmortifiedā when she saw the segment. Moffitt, who works at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, had spent decades with her colleagues collecting data from around 1,000 people to create the basis for one of the tests provided by TruDiagnostic. She had hoped that her work might one day inform medical decisions or provide a way for researchers to assess whether an anti-ageing treatment is having a positive effect on health. A stunt on a reality-TV show was not the kind of publicity she was aiming for. āI have a snobās view of reality TV,ā she adds.
Mixed feelings of enthusiasm and apprehension were common among researchers who spoke to Nature about efforts to develop tests that measure the impact of ageing on the body. With money pouring into the field and an unprecedented level of public attention and excitement, scientists are publishing a steady stream of papers on ways to measure how rapidly a personās body is declining. Many of the measures look at chemical marks on DNA known as methylation, or at proteins or metabolites that can be found in the blood. These biological markers, or biomarkers, could prove incredibly useful as part of burgeoning efforts to develop drugs and other therapies that would forestall the negative effects of ageing and increase what gerontologists refer to as the healthy lifespan.
Read the full article: How quickly are you ageing? What molecular āclocksā can tell you about your health
