Old before your time? People age at wildly different rates, study confirms
Tests on physiological markers in nearly 1,000 38-year-olds found that some had biological ages many years older than their birthdates would suggest
If the school reunion was not proof enough, scientists have confirmed that people grow old at radically different rates, with some ageing much faster than their fresh-faced former classmates.
A study of nearly one thousand 38-year-olds found that while most had biological ages close to the number of birthdays they had notched up, others were far younger or older.
Researchers used 18 physiological markers, including blood pressure, organ function, and metabolism, to assess the biological age of each of the participants. For some, the past dozen years had taken no obvious toll on their body’s biology.
But others were not so fortunate. A good many participants had biological ages in the 50s, while one, described by scientists as an “extreme case”, had a biological age of 61 years old. That meant that for every birthday over the past dozen years, their body had aged three years.
“The overwhelming majority are biologically in their mid-40s or younger, but there are a handful of cases who are in pretty bad shape. In the future, we’ll come to learn about the different lives that fast and slow ageing people have lived,” said Daniel Belsky at Duke University in North Carolina.
The researchers drew on data gathered on 871 people enrolled in the Dunedin study, a major investigation that has tracked the health and broader lives of around 1000 New Zealanders born in 1972 or 1973 in the town of Dunedin, New Zealand. Of the original group, 30 had died by the age of 38 due to serious diseases such as cancer, or by accidents, suicides and drug overdoses.
“Our goal was to see if we can measure ageing in young people,” said Belsky. “It’s becoming increasingly clear that ageing is really the cause of much of the disease and disability burden we face, but our existing science is based on ageing in older people who already have a lot of age-related diseases.”
……..The scientists went on to see whether volunteers’ biological ages matched how they old they looked. They invited students to view photos of the study participants and guess their ages. The biologically older people were consistently rated as looking older than their 38 years.
“Already, before midlife, individuals who were ageing more rapidly were less physically able, showed cognitive decline and brain ageing, self-reported worse health, and looked older,” the scientists write.
The next step in the research is to sift through the lives of the Dunedin participants to see how factors such as lifestyle, medical history, family circumstances, and stressful events might affect the speed at which people age.
Full article: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jul/06/old-before-your-time-people-age-at-wildly-different-rates-study-confirms