You might have heard your parents or grandparents say something like, “Oh to be young again,” at some point in your life. A new report suggests they might want to retract that statement. The study claims to shed light on how we age and the pace may not be the same for all of us.
The study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America studied 954 people from the same New Zealand town where they were born from 1972 to 1973 and tracked biomarkers at ages 26, 32 and 38. The study, Dunedin Study birth cohort, developed two methods — a cross-sectional and longitudinal — explaining how aging can be measured in young adults.
After analyzing the report, the BBC explained that, “the analysis showed that at the age of 38, the people’s biological ages ranged from the late-20s to those who were nearly 60.”
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
The Dunedin Study birth cohort showed that some of the observed subjects almost stopped aging biologically throughout the duration of the study while others gained almost three biological years for every one chronicle year that passed.
The BBC said:
“Most people’s biological age was within a few years of their chronological age. It is unclear how the pace of biological aging changes through life with these measures.”
By understanding what makes young people have worn out biological ages, it may help in discovering methods for preventing medical complications caused by old age.
A Personalized Approach to Medication Nonadherence
At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
The study findings “indicate that aging processes can be quantified in people still young enough for prevention of age-related disease, opening a new door for anti-aging therapies. The science of healthspan extension may be focused on the wrong end of the lifespan; rather than only studying old humans, geroscience should also study the young.”
Duke University Professor Terri Moffitt told the BBC that using chronological age can be unreliable and knowing more about biological age would allow us to understand people’s health in a more fair way. She explained that understanding biological age can be useful in determining something like a person “working at their peak” in order to assess when they should retire.
Sure the Benjamin Button movie about a boy with the looks of a child but the biological insides of an old man may be fictional, but it looks like the concept isn’t too far off from the results of this study.
Photo: Flickr user Devon D’Ewart
