A recent study led by Stanford Medicine investigators shows that various organs in the human body age at different rates, affecting an individual’s risk of developing diseases associated with those organs and even mortality.
The research involved analyzing data from 5,678 participants and identified that around one in five reasonably healthy adults aged 50 or older have at least one organ aging acceleratedly.
The study offers a potential breakthrough in identifying the accelerated aging of specific organs through a simple blood test, allowing for early therapeutic interventions before clinical symptoms appear.
“By estimating the biological age of an organ in a healthy person, we can predict their risk of diseases related to that organ,” explained senior author Tony Wyss-Coray, a professor of neurology.
The research delved beyond traditional measures of biological age, developing distinct estimates for 11 key organs, including the heart, lung, kidney, brain, and more.
The study discovered that approximately 18.4% of individuals aged 50 or older have one organ aging significantly faster than the average, putting them at higher risk for diseases related to that organ.
Moreover, individuals with two organs aging rapidly faced a mortality risk 6.5 times higher than those without accelerated organ aging.
The research utilized blood tests to assess the levels of thousands of proteins and identified nearly 900 organ-specific proteins associated with accelerated organ aging.
The findings indicate that monitoring the health of specific organs in healthy individuals may help identify accelerated organ aging and provide opportunities for early treatment. Furthermore, identifying organ-specific proteins related to accelerated aging could lead to the development of new drug targets.
The research team has co-founded a company, Teal Omics Inc., to explore the commercialization of their findings, and a patent application has been filed related to this work.
Collaborating researchers from other institutions, including Washington University, the University of California, San Francisco, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Montefiore Medical Center, contributed to this study.
If you care about wellness, please read studies about how ultra-processed foods and red meat influence your longevity, and why seafood may boost healthy aging.
For more wellness information, please see recent studies that olive oil may help you live longer, and vitamin D could help lower the risk of autoimmune diseases.
The research findings can be found in Nature.
Copyright © 2023 Knowridge Science Report. All rights reserved.
