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 squad spearheaded by Tony Wyss-Coray Wyss-Coray a Stanford Medicine professor who has spent almost years fixated on the review of aging declared that the tool could change our approach to medical care It could help us shift from sick care to fitness care and empower people to take care of their own body he reported 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 details for people from the UK Biobank a database that has kept detailed healthcare information from over half a million British citizens for the last years When they analyzed the input the researchers ascertained 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 illness But the brain s biological age Wyss-Coray commented was particularly central in determining or predicting how long you re going to live If you have a very young brain those people live the longest he explained 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 complaint over the next decade than those with extremely youthful brains the whose brains inhabited the other end of the spectrum Wyss-Coray s group also unveiled 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 reported With these results Wyss-Coray s band 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 exposed 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 revealed It detected an early signal of decline and it empowered me to act Coletta was so impressed that he agreed to discovered Vero Bioscience a company that now has an specific 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 wellbeing clinic It s not just a kit where you send us your blood and you get a outcome he commented We want to assistance 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 mentioned would cost once it could be operated at scale Malia Fullerton a professor of bioethics and humanities at the University of Washington stated 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 briskly aging organs and replace them with new ones she mentioned 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 stated the question your readers could ask themselves is Is human lifespan and is human quality of life merely a function of the wellness of our organs or is there specific higher-order set of interactions here that are not being captured in this kind of analysis Wyss-Coray announced the risks of an organ transplant right now far outweighed the prospective reward of replacing an aged organ with a healthy one particularly since the test was merely a exposure assessment In any scenario he declared it would be challenging to solve the issue comprehensively You can t prevent people with money from going to a place where they can get the surgery they want he noted But I think it s a remote possibility Fullerton also raised concerns about the use of the UK Biobank the database Wyss-Coray s group used The database she reported 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 significant 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 mentioned Wyss-Coray declared he hoped to remedy this issue by conducting studies on Asian and Arab populations in the future However he noted he is confident in the global applicability of his results Related Articles Jennifer Aniston hypnotist beau cuddled during Big Sur getaway review 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 Healthcare provider 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 noted 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 system Coletta has high hopes I see it as being the gold standard of healthcare biomarkers used everywhere by every physician and every consumer so that you re constantly staying one step ahead of condition he reported Consumers being empowered to take their fitness into their own hands