61 in 38

From April 1972 to March 1973, 1037 living babies were born in the New Zealand city of Danidine. The doctors watched from early childhood as closely as they could - and still continue. This group is known as the “Danidine cohort” to world medical science: on its example, the frequency of different mental diseases, the effect of smoking on tooth enamel and even marijuana on IQ was studied. When you have so many people who have grown at the same time and have passed through the same cabinets of doctors at the same age (3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 18, 21, 26, 32 and 38 years), it is convenient to draw far -reaching statistical conclusions.

38 years, the participants of the Danidine cohort were fulfilled in 2010 or in 2011; 954 people came for another examination for doctors. The examinations caught the eye of Daniel Belski from the University of Duke (North Carolina, USA). Together with 14 co -authors, he decided to find out how the processes of aging in the body of adults manifest themselves in the very prime of strength, which so far it never occurred to anyone to call old people. For example, 38-year-old New Zealanders. A scientific article with the results was published on Monday in PNAS magazine , an official messenger of the US National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers proceeded from the assumption that chronic senile diseases - from Alzheimer to diabetes of the second type - prepare the soil for themselves long before the doctor diagnoses them. “Instead of studying some old people, gerontology should also deal with young people,” the authors formulate their program.

The retina is a good indicator of how quickly your brain is aging. Looking at her microphotography, neurologists are able to estimate whether you will soon begin to complain about bad memory.

In the case of the Danidine cohort, ready -made “senile” diagnoses by 38 years had only 1.1 percent of its participants. What to do with the others? Search for them from the so -called biomarkers of age - visible signs that speak of invisible processes.

What are biomarkers? For example, the retina is a good indicator of how quickly your brain is aging. Looking at her detailed photos, neurologists are able to estimate whether you will soon begin to complain about bad memory and whether the ambulance will take you to the hospital with a stroke.

Only at first glance this procedure has something in common with fortune -telling along the lines in the palm of your hand. But there is no magic in it. Just the blood vessels of the retina were formed - it was shortly before your birth - from the same group of embryo cells as the thinnest capillaries of the brain that supply neurons. When these capillaries in the brain begin to degrade, the intellect in its different manifestations will begin to imperceptibly weaken, and Alzheimer can end with everything.

Unlike the vessels of the brain, arteriola and veins of the retina are good in that it is always in sight. Therefore (at least in theory), observing the retina, you can track the processes destructive for the brain in the early stages, when there is still chances to slow down the dementia.

But this applies to one brain. But how to understand whether the body as a whole is aging quickly? Doctors introduced the convenient concept of “biological age”, which may differ from the passport. How much is very different? You can take a formula that takes into account different biomarkers (the authors selected 18 pieces, from blood pressure and body weight index to the concentration of apolipoproteins B 100/A1 ), and calculate. For 38-year-olds from the Danidine cohort, the formula issued the results from 28 to 61 years.

For some, one calendar year of life corresponded to two or three biological.

Some are getting noticeably faster than others. Comparing 38-year-old biomarkers with their own biomarkers at 32 years old and 26 years old, the authors conclude that extra “biological years” do not accumulate evenly from infancy: accelerated aging begins in adulthood. When for all 954 participants in the cohort calculated the speed of aging, it turned out that some calendar year of life corresponded to two or three biological ones.

The biological age deduced by the formula is fully consistent with our template ideas about old age. When photographs of 38-year-old New Zealanders were presented to students of the university, not reporting anything about people depicted in the photo, the students called the "older" those whose biological age is higher. In addition, a direct dependence between the “age according to the formula” and the intellect was discovered: the older than 38 years from a biological point of view, the worse he copes with puzzles from standard IQ tests.

To know how many biological years you are not so much as a reason for despair or joy, but a useful advantage in a medical sense. Doctors give a lot of tips that take into account the age clearly - from the proposal to show the gastroenterologist every year after 50 to the recommendation to keep the pulse 150 on the treadmill, when you are 30 and 140, when you are 40. These tips could be much more targeted if the biological age was taken into account instead of passport.

But the main plus is the ability to notice and prevent diseases associated with age in time: from cardiovascular and diabetes of the second type to Alzheimer and Parkinson. Among them there are many such that the first visible symptoms mean the final stage of an incurable disease - as in the case of Parkinson's illness, when trembling and rigidity of the muscles put a person before the fact that he has only 20 percent of 20 nerve cells that produce dopamine, a “motivation molecule”. Therefore, if biomarkers show accelerated aging, it makes sense for a person to engage in their health and bypass all diagnosticians, without waiting for old age on the passport.