Image: Dreamstime
(September 8, 2015) The
findings, published today in Genome Biology, could help improve management of
age-related disease by identifying people most at risk of diseases affected by
age, as well as improve the way anti-ageing treatments are evaluated.
The seven-year collaborative study at King’s College London,
Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Duke University in the USA, used a process
called RNA-profiling to measure and compare gene expression in thousands of
human tissue samples. Rather than looking for genes associated with disease or
extreme longevity, the Medical Research Council (MRC)-funded researchers
discovered that the ‘activation’ of 150 genes in the blood, brain and muscle
tissue were a hallmark of good health at 65 years of age. The researchers were
then able to create a reproducible formula for ‘healthy ageing’, and use this
to tell how well a person is ageing when compared to others born the same year.
The researchers found an extensive range in ‘biological age’
scores of people born at the same time indicating that a person’s biological
age is separate and distinct to his or her chronological age.
Importantly, a low score was found to correlate with
cognitive decline, implying that the molecular test could translate into a
simple blood test to predict those most at risk of Alzheimer’s disease or other
dementias and suitable for taking part in prevention trials.