A team of scientists has shown that analyzing blood proteins makes it possible to study the aging of organs and predict a person’s risk of disease, which would help treat them long before symptoms begin.
Led by researchers from Stanford University School of Medicine (California) and carried out with 5,678 people, the study shows that when the age of a person’s organ is especially advanced compared to others of the same age, the carrier is at greater risk of dying or suffering from diseases related to that organ.
According to the study, the details of which are published this Wednesday in Nature, one in five reasonably healthy adults aged 50 or older has at least one organ that is aging at a very rapid rate.
“Many studies have presented figures that represent the biological age of individuals – according to a series of biomarkers – as opposed to their chronological age,” explains Tony Wyss-Coray, professor of neurology at Stanford.
The new study has gone further and has obtained specific figures for each key organ and tissueand for the immune and vascular systems.