An international team of researchers has created the most comprehensive set of organ-specific “ageing clocks” ever developed, and shown that having a healthier brain may reduce your risk of dementia and early death. The findings, published in Nature Aging, reveal that the pace of ageing varies from organ to organ and predicts disease risk and longevity.
“Ageing clocks” are statistical models that enable measurements of biological age compared to chronological age. These tools estimate how fast a person’s organs are ageing compared to the expected ageing.
Ageing is not a single process. Instead, the brain, arteries, kidneys and other organs each follow their own ageing timeline. The organ-by-organ approach offers a powerful new way to understand why people of the same chronological age can have very different health outcomes.
The team from the UK (Oxford Population Health), USA (Broad Institute) and China (Peking University) combined data on proteins found in blood from participants in UK Biobank with genetic and tissue-level information from the US Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) project. The models were validated using the China Kadoorie Biobank and the US Nurses’ Health Study.
Read the full story on the Nuffield Department of Population Health website