
Quantification of biological aging in young adults - T-A
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/07/01/1506264112
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reasonattlm
Biomarkers of aging to allow short-term measures of how biologically (as
opposed to chronologically) old an individual might be are very important in
the future development of treatments for aging. The only present way to
determine effects on longevity is to wait and see, which is enormously,
painfully expensive in time and money in mice, and out of the question in
humans. Short-cutting that with a test that you run before and after a few
weeks or months of a putative rejuvenation therapy would greatly speed the
process of experimentation and assessment, and time taken in development is of
great importance when (a) we're all still aging to death, and (b) there are
many promising early-stage approaches to repair and reverse the underlying
causes of age-related degeneration.

This is why there is great interest in, for example, DNA methylation patterns
that seem to correlate very well with age. I'm not aware of anything else that
is presently as promising as a biomarker of aging.

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/acel.123...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/acel.12349/)

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ghkbrew
The big caveat to that, being that you need to make sure whatever proxy marker
you're looking at remains correlated even in the treatment setting. It doesn't
seem like there would be a good way to do that without running the longterm
studies you're trying to avoid. We may be better off basing research on more
directly detrimental aspects of aging. e.g. using mobility and mental acuity
as end points instead of a biomarker. That way even if a "rejuvenation"
therapy which is successful in the short term doesn't extend life, it still
provides some benefit.

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nathan_f77
> Our findings indicate that aging processes can be quantified in people still
> young enough for prevention of age-related disease, opening a new door for
> antiaging therapies.

I have the sinking feeling that I'm going to miss out on these preventative
measures by only a few decades.

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mason240
Millennials will be the last generation to die.

