Stanford researchers develop new tool to measure biological age

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a new tool that can compute the biological age of human organs by processing a single vial of blood The tool unveiled in Nature Medicine Wednesday morning was developed by a research crew spearheaded by Tony Wyss-Coray Wyss-Coray a Stanford Medicine professor who has spent almost years fixated on the investigation of aging stated that the tool could change our approach to wellbeing care It could help us shift from sick care to wellness care and empower people to take care of their own body he commented Scouring a single draw of blood for thousands of proteins the tool works by first comparing the levels of these proteins with their average levels at a given age An artificial intelligence algorithm then uses these gaps to derive a biological age for each organ To test the accuracy of these biological ages the researchers processed material for people from the UK Biobank a database that has kept detailed physical condition information from over half a million British citizens for the last years When they analyzed the content the researchers unveiled a clear trend for all organs they studied biologically older organs were significantly more likely to develop aging-related diseases than younger ones For instance those with older hearts were at much higher exposure for atrial fibrillation or heart failure while those with older lungs were much more likely to develop chronic obstructive pulmonary condition But the brain s biological age Wyss-Coray mentioned was particularly essential in determining or predicting how long you re going to live If you have a very young brain those people live the longest he announced If you have a very old brain those people are going to die the soonest out of all the organs we looked at Indeed for a given chronological age those with extremely aged brains the whose brains scored the highest on biological age were over times more likely to develop Alzheimer s sickness over the next decade than those with extremely youthful brains the whose brains inhabited the other end of the spectrum Wyss-Coray s club also determined several factors smoking alcohol poverty insomnia and processed meat consumption were directly correlated with biologically aged organs Poultry consumption vigorous exercise and oily fish consumption were among the factors correlated with biologically youthful organs Supplements like glucosamine and estrogen replacements also seemed to have protective effects Wyss-Coray noted With these results Wyss-Coray s organization set about testing the tool on people in real time The fifth person they tested was Paul Coletta an entrepreneur who decided to participate in the test after reading a preliminary Nature paper that had been sent by a friend The test identified that Coletta then had kidneys that were biologically years old My GFR my creatinine all the typical kidney biomarkers came back as normal but I followed up with an ultrasound and it revealed a large renal cyst in my left kidney he commented It ascertained an early signal of decline and it empowered me to act Coletta was so impressed that he agreed to exposed Vero Bioscience a company that now has an particular license from Stanford Medicine to commercialize the product with Wyss-Coray Coletta explained he planned to make the tool the core of an at-home AI soundness clinic It s not just a kit where you send us your blood and you get a effect he reported We want to advocacy the consumer through the journey of what the intervention should be for that organ interpreting the results and then retesting to see if there was a reversal in the organ age The test Coletta disclosed would cost once it could be operated at scale Malia Fullerton a professor of bioethics and humanities at the University of Washington declared that while the tool seems very promising as a global technique there were several ethical concerns when it came to its application I could imagine for folks who are interested in being super agers a desire to get rid of their speedily aging organs and replace them with new ones she declared I see the first negative consequence particularly if this goes directly to consumer being putting strains on our organ donation system which is already under complete duress Overall Fullerton announced the question your readers could ask themselves is Is human lifespan and is human quality of life merely a function of the medical of our organs or is there various higher-order set of interactions here that are not being captured in this kind of analysis Wyss-Coray noted the risks of an organ transplant at present far outweighed the promising reward of replacing an aged organ with a healthy one particularly since the test was merely a peril assessment In any episode he reported it would be challenging to solve the issue altogether You can t prevent people with money from going to a place where they can get the surgery they want he stated But I think it s a remote possibility Fullerton also raised concerns about the use of the UK Biobank the database Wyss-Coray s gang used The database she mentioned was widely acknowledged within the bioethics public to be notoriously monochromatic as its participants skew heavily white I don t have any reason to believe that organs would age differently in different groups but it is extremely major that we do our work for biomedical research in diverse cohorts so that we can ensure the information we are generating is generalizable to all populations of patients she declared Wyss-Coray explained he hoped to remedy this issue by conducting studies on Asian and Arab populations in the future However he commented he is confident in the global applicability of his results Related Articles Jennifer Aniston hypnotist beau cuddled during Big Sur getaway account Bird flu urgency response ends in US as infections decline US adults want the cabinet to focus on child care costs not birth rates poll finds Expert accused of abusing patients treated California hospital like a sexual playground attorneys allege Presence of ICE inside California hospital denounced by local leaders immigration activists I think overall we find that basic principles of biology are common to mankind he announced Cholesterol-lowering drugs work in all ethnicities and there will be similarly broad leanings that will apply to any ethnicity or race For now Wyss-Coray and Coletta hope to commercialize the test with Vero Bioscience within the next three years And as for the future of the apparatus Coletta has high hopes I see it as being the gold standard of robustness biomarkers used everywhere by every physician and every consumer so that you re constantly staying one step ahead of syndrome he revealed Consumers being empowered to take their vitality into their own hands