With Mathilde Fontez, editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine Epsiloon, today we talk about the real age of our organs. Arteries, liver, immune system, and cardiovascular system do not age at the same rate, according to a recent discovery.
franceinfo: Our organs are not all the same age. Is this what a team from the University of Singapore has just discovered?
Yes, we don’t necessarily have the age of our arteries. In any case, our arteries are not necessarily the same age as our kidneys, or our liver. This is shown by a study carried out on the basis of samples collected from more than 400 people, aged 20 to 45. This is the originality of this work: the researchers have chosen to study the aging process in young people, to track the early changes in each of our organs.
They worked from blood samples?
Not only: they collected blood tests, but also stool samples, results of physical examinations, and even images of the skin of the face. In the end, they came up with a measurement chart of 400 biological characteristics – 403 to be exact – which they sorted into 9 categories: liver, kidney, gut microbiome, cardiovascular system, immunity, metabolism and hormones.
And what they see is that the wear of each of these body parts varies a lot from person to person, and even within a single individual. What they also see is that some of these organs reflect age, such as the cardiovascular system, while others change at their own pace, such as the gut microbiome.
Can we therefore quantify a sort of biological age for each organ?
Yes, it validates this concept of biological age. This is an idea that has been explored since the 1970s: for a long time, specialists have said that the state of the body’s cells can be interpreted as an age, which would be different from age, in years.
But this is the first precise, truly quantitative study. And this scale that the researchers have chosen, the organ scale, is particularly relevant. The kidney, the liver, the heart system each have an age.
Could this allow early detection of disease?
That’s the idea, yes. The researchers noted, for example, that the data they collected on our liver could be used to predict which people are likely to later suffer from fatty liver, an excess of fat in the liver, which is not due to a overconsumption of alcohol.
Overall, the study suggests that tracking the biological age of individual organs could prevent risk, improve early treatment and screening. And why not, predict our lifespan: the researchers concluded their study by crossing their 9 indicators per organ, with the biological data of more than 4,000 people, half of whom are centenarians, to see if they find them. And it works, but not with great precision. Obviously the influence of lifestyles, of the environment, remains unknown in this equation.
Discover how our broad multi-omics expertise has uncovered new insights into the fascinating area of biological age (BA) in our new, first-authored study just published in @CellReports!https://t.co/rqGQMjUqG8 pic.twitter.com/KwLLZSEw0P
—BGI (@BGI_Genomics) March 11, 2022