A question I’ve been asking since I started killing zombie cells 6 years ago.
It’s a difficult thing to measure directly. In clinical studies they use multiple measurements, one being tissue/cell counts. (biopsy or autopsy) Senescent cells have a very specific “look” and can be counted. SASP (senescence associated secretory phenotype) encompasses over 500 cytokines, chemokines and other secretions. These are not all exclusively markers of senescence and have other contributing factors but it appears a few may be exclusively related to senescence.
If you would like to know how difficult this is, check out this paper.
Further up this thread there is reference to a soon to be release test that is specific to senescence and this would be the first.
Theoretically at a high level, one would look for reduction in inflammation BUT many things can contribute to inflammation. Not just senescent cells increase inflammation so hsCRP is not great for identifying senescence, specifically. Other markers have multiple sources so it’s not easy to measure a level of senescence. It would be amazing to have a test so one could iterate and maintain a low healthy level.
β-galactosidase (β-Gal) assay is typically used in clinical studies BUT not on it’s own as there are, again, other things that can affect this marker besides senescence so it’s not the best marker either. And the reason multiple tests are done in senescence related studies.
Another issue is that SNC’s are typically tissue specific and not “mobile”. By tissue specific I mean “injury site” specific. Sun burns generate a lot of SNC’s in your skin… Injure your back and you will have them in your damaged vertebral disks. Get a concussion and you will have them in your brain, cut yourself, break a bone, bruise a muscle, have a heart attack, get a lung infection like Covid, etc. and there will be tissue specific senescent cells, localized to the injury.
I settled on epigenetic markers 5 years ago when I did my first DNAm test through Bioviva (Liz Parrish) and found my bio-age was 13 years younger than my chrono-age but they stopped offering that service so I switched to Trudiagnostic and have done 5 tests over 4 years with them. Every one a bit better, except the one shortly after getting covid. My results since that infection have continued to improve and are better then before covid.
I also used this test when I ran a very small evaluation with 4 strangers I met on the internet LoL! Over a 7 month, 3 cycle evaluation every participant had an improvement in their markers. A few were quite spectacular.
Combilytics_Corp_Product_Evaluation_Results.pdf (217.0 KB)