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Test shows how old your body really is

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34153135

Scientists say they have developed a way of testing how well, or badly, your body is ageing.

They say it could help predict when a person will die, identify those at high-risk of dementia and could affect medicine, pensions and insurance.

The team at King's College London say looking at "biological age" is more useful than using a date of birth.

However, the work, published in Genome Biology, provides no clues as to how to slow the ageing process.

The test looks for an "ageing signature" in your body's cells by comparing the behaviour of 150 genes.

It was developed by initially comparing 54,000 markers of gene activity in healthy, but largely sedentary, 25 and 65-year-olds and then whittling them down to a final 150.

Prof Jamie Timmons, from King's College London, told the BBC News website: "There's a healthy ageing signature that's common to all our tissues, and it appears to be prognostic for a number of things including longevity and cognitive decline.

"It looks like from the age of 40 onwards you can use this to give guidance on how well an individual is ageing."
 

Little Bluestem

All Good Things Must Come to an End
Messages
4,930
It would also be interesting to test a cohort of PWME, then test them again when they had improved. I wonder if they would get 'younger'.
 

lansbergen

Senior Member
Messages
2,512
Is there a difference between feeling old and feeling crap??

English is not my first language. Is crap something of extremely poor quality?

Several of my costumers were medical trained and some still practicing. They saw I was ill and one later (when I was improving ) said: I thought you were terminal.

My health was of poor quality but I think poor health not necessarily means feeling old.
 

heapsreal

iherb 10% discount code OPA989,
Messages
10,089
Location
australia (brisbane)
English is not my first language. Is crap something of extremely poor quality?

Several of my costumers were medical trained and some still practicing. They saw I was ill and one later (when I was improving ) said: I thought you were terminal.

My health was of poor quality but I think poor health not necessarily means feeling old.


Yes it is. Although crap means a few things. I was going to say feel like shit which may have made more sense??? lol.

Screenshot_2015-07-06-13-26-04.png
 

adreno

PR activist
Messages
4,841
According to the authors, lifestyle didn't affect ageing at all, which is hard to swallow. I wonder if this could be due to lack of variance in the data, i.e. participants had a very similar lifestyle?
 

whodathunkit

Senior Member
Messages
1,160
Probably more likely that this will be used to crank up your insurance premiums.
Yep, and to decide who "deserves" treatment. People not aging well according to this test may conceivably be denied certain treatment because they don't represent a good cost/benefit ratio accordign to long-term prognosis.