Aging would occur in stages, at 34, 60 and 78 years. It was by precisely measuring the levels of the 373 proteins that circulate in the blood of the participants in their study that researchers at Stanford University were able to reliably predict their age.
Forget all your landmarks! Life would not be divided between childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age and old age. Our aging would take place in three identifiable stages depending on the level of proteins circulating in the blood. And these times when our body would take a “stroke of old” would be at 34, 60 and 78 years old.
This is revealed by a study conducted by researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine published in early December in the journal NatureMedicine.
What happens at these three ages? The levels of proteins present in the blood plasma undergo abrupt changes up or down.
“We have known for a long time that the measurement of certain proteins in the blood can provide information on the state of health of a person, such as lipoproteins for cardiovascular health, for example. But we didn’t realize that the levels of so many different proteins – about a third of those we looked at – change markedly with age,” says Tony Wyss-Coray, professor of neurology and science. neurology at the Stanford Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.
According to him, these changes in the levels of protein migrating from the body’s tissues to the blood are markers of aging. By measuring the levels of 373 proteins circulating in the blood, we can know with precision not only the state of health of a person, but especially his biological age.
Aging at 3 stages of life
To reach this conclusion, the researchers analyzed the blood plasma of 4,263 people between the ages of 18 and 95. The results they obtained are edifying, since they suggest that physiological aging does not take place at a regular rate, but rather in stages at three stages of life. And 34, 60 and 78 stand out as pivotal ages when the number of different blood proteins with noticeable changes are present in abundance in the plasma.
According to scientists, this happens because instead of steadily rising or falling or staying the same throughout life, the levels of many proteins remain constant for a period of time and then, at some point or another, undergo abrupt changes that tend to cluster at three different points in a person’s life: early adulthood, late middle age, and old age.
Predict diseases related to aging
Thanks to this discovery, the researchers were able to determine the age of individuals with a margin of error of plus or minus three years. In people whose predicted age was considerably younger than their actual age, results based on blood protein showed that they were remarkably healthy for their age.
According to the authors of this work, new research would make it possible not only to identify people at risk of developing age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s or cardiovascular disease, but also to find therapeutic avenues to delay the aging process. . This is all the more encouraging, they explain, since the taking of a single drop of blood allows the reading of the 373 proteins.
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