Researchers here add one more correlation between blood biochemistry and aging to the growing list. The greater the number of simple measures that can be associated with age-related decline, the more likely it is that researchers can find an algorithmic combination of those measures that quite accurately reflects biological age. At the moment epigenetic clocks based on assessment of DNA methylation patterns are leading the pack of potential biomarkers of aging because they are in effect a combined set of smaller measures, those being made by the cells themselves. Many specific DNA methylation changes are reactions to the cellular damage and dysfunction of aging. However, other approaches to combining measures of aging and cellular reactions may turn out to be better in the end. We shall see in the years ahead.

Generally agreed upon, robust, cheap, and reliable biomarkers of aging are important because they will greatly accelerate the pace of development in aging research. Currently the field lacks a good, rapid way to assess the outcome of a potential intervention to slow or reverse the aging process. The only widely accepted approach is to carry out life span studies, and that means that any sort of debate over viability or quality or strategy will drag on for years, and cost millions that might have been invested elsewhere. Mouse life span studies are not cheap. If the field is instead equipped with an assessment of biological age that can run immediately before and immediately after a treatment, then exploration and validation in aging research will become far more rapid and far less costly. The best approaches, most likely something along the lines of the SENS damage repair strategy, will win out more rapidly.

Link: https://doi.org/10.1111/acel.12706