Scientists develop blood-based indicator to detect the age of an organ in the human body

Researchers have developed a bloodbased indicator of age of an organ that can be used to assess its current age and predict the risk of a disease that might affect it 10 years later Ones biological age measures how well the body functions compared to the chronological ageHowever the organs inside the body are all said to be ageing at different speedsThe researchers including those from the US Stanford University looked at 11 separate organ systems brain muscle heart lung arteries liver kidneys pancreas immune system intestine and fatWeve developed a bloodbased indicator of the age of your organs With this indicator we can assess the age of an organ today and predict the odds of your getting a disease associated with that organ 10 years later senior author Tony WyssCoray professor of neurology and neurological sciences Stanford University School of Medicine saidFindings published in the journal Nature Medicine showed that the biological age of one particular organ the brain plays an outsized role in determining how long an individual might live Nearly 45000 people of ages 40 to 70 were randomly selected from the UK Biobank and monitored for up to 17 years for changes in their health statusUsing a commercially available lab technology the researchers counted amounts of about 3000 proteins in each participants bloodAround 15 per cent of the proteins could be traced to singleorgan origins and many others to multipleorgan generationAn algorithm was developed that found how much the composite protein signature for each organ being assessed differed from the overall average for people of that ageThus a biological age was assigned to each of the 11 distinct organs or organ systems assessed for each participant using plasma proteomics a largescale analysis of proteins circulating in the blood plasmaOnethird of the participants were found to have at least one organ that was either extremely aged or extremely youthful while one in four had multiple extremely aged or extremely youthful organsFor the brain extremely aged translated to being among the 67 per cent of the study participants brains whose protein signatures fell at one end of the biologicalage distribution and extremely youthful brains fell into the 67 per cent at the opposite endFurther the link between having an extremely aged brain and developing Alzheimers disease was found to be particularly powerful 31 times that of one with a normally aging brain However an extremely youthful brain was especially protective against Alzheimers barely onefourth that of a person with a normally aged brain the researchers foundThe brain is the gatekeeper of longevity If youve got an old brain you have an increased likelihood of mortality If youve got a young brain youre probably going to live longer WyssCoray saidWyssCoray added that brain age was the best single predictor of overall mortality Having an extremely aged brain increased the participants risk of dying by 182 per cent over a roughly 15year period while those with extremely youthful brains had an overall 40 per cent reduction in risk of dying over the same duration he saidThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever