Sunday, April 30, 2017

Are you as old as you think you are?

According to a study done Kings College in London, someones actual age might not exactly link up to their biological age. "By reading a "signature" based on 150 of a person's genes, researchers can determine the individual's biological age, which may be different from his or her chronological age, according to a new study" (Miller).  This may be good news in research towards prevention for diaereses since knowing someones biological age is better for determining someones actual health. Studies showed someones biological age is closely linked to the risk of getting certain age related diseases such as dementia. While two people could been the exact same age, they could still have completely different biological ages and have completely different risks to watch out for. Now a days insurance companies are even finding peoples chronological ages to help set insurance premiums to determine their risk for certain diseases with knowledge found from studies like this one.  Researchers found 150 genes that can be calculated to find a persons healthy age gene score. To test the study they tried it on a group of 70 year old's. The findings were that people with a higher score did show linkage between a persons good health. In patients with Alzheimer's disease it was found that their scores were very low.  "This provides strong evidence that dementia in humans could be called a type of 'accelerated aging' or 'failure to activate the healthy aging program,'" Timmons said.

This is an amazing and interesting article because it gives insight to why people of the same age might have drastically different health related diseases. Hopefully with further studies of the 150 genes used to understand chronological age can give us greater insight on the causes of Alzheimer's diseases and lead us to discover new ways to possibly treat or prevent the disease. This could also help with finding out reasons why people age biologically more then others. 

Link to article: http://www.livescience.com/52105-biological-age-cognitive-health-genes.html

To find out more about Alzheimer's early signs go to: http://www.livescience.com/35611-alzheimers-disease-brain-shrink-early-signs.html 

3 comments:

  1. This was summarized very well! This coorelates to neuropyschology as well. Dementia is a big problem in our generation now and research on the biology and genetic outlook of it is very well in figuring our the complex problems of AD and other dementias. Great report and would be very useful to a student interested in psychology as well and biology.

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  2. I think this article is highly interesting. While we all know our bodies age differently than everybody else, we also know our bodies age differently age versus biological age. Diseases are one of biggest problems with our bodies, and do ages us much faster. Great post!

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  3. I felt this article sheds light on things a lot of people do not normally think about. Yes you are actually how old you have been on this earth, but everyone's body ages differently. This even means some age faster than others. I have seen some people develop major health problems and pass away at the age of 50, while others are completely healthy and going strong at the age of 101.

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