Predicting Your Risk: Measuring the Speed of Aging in Different Organs Can Determine Disease Risk

Research findings have shown that the risk of disease can be predicted by the speed of aging. / Shutterstock

The organs and tissues of a person’s body age at different rates, and it has been shown that measuring the rate of aging of each organ and tissue can predict the risk of developing a specific disease in the future.

Additionally, one in five people has been found to have one or more organs that age faster than other organs, increasing the risk of developing certain diseases in the future and increasing the risk of death by 15-50% within 15 years.

Professor Tony Weiss-Coray’s team at Stanford University School of Medicine recently announced in the scientific journal Nature that they had developed a method to measure differences in aging rates between the organs of living people by measuring levels of human-derived plasma proteins from specific organs.

Additionally, using a machine learning model, the aging of 11 major organs, organs and tissues was studied, including the heart, fat, lungs, immune system, kidney, liver, muscle, pancreas, brain, vascular system and intestine. 5,676 adults analyzed the relationship between the rate of aging of each organ and the risk of disease and death.

The research team said in the context of the study that previous animal studies have shown that aging varies from individual to individual and from organ to organ within an individual, but it is unclear whether this also applies to humans and how it affects aging diseases.

The research team first tested the levels of around 5,000 proteins in the blood of 1,400 healthy people aged between 20 and 90 and selected 858 proteins whose genes were more than four times more active in a organ than in other organs.

Additionally, a machine learning algorithm was trained to estimate the age of a specific person or organ based on the levels of approximately 5,000 proteins, and through this algorithm, the algorithm found proteins that were highly correlated with the acceleration of aging of the specific person or organ.

The research team then used this machine learning model to study 5,676 adults to determine how much faster 11 major organs, organs, and tissues age compared to age based on birth year, and how the rate of aging of each organ is related to the risk of specific diseases and death and we analyzed whether there was such a thing.

As a result, each organ in a person’s body tends to age similarly, but individual organs generally follow different aging paths.

Among the 11 organs, the age of 10 organs excluding the intestine was significantly related to the risk of death from all causes during the 15-year follow-up period.

About 20 percent of the study subjects had at least one organ that aged faster than other organs, and their 15-year risk of death was 15 to 50 percent higher than that of people without such an organ.

People with rapidly aging hearts had a 250% greater risk of heart failure than those with normally aging hearts, and people with rapidly aging brains were 180% more likely to show cognitive decline in the next five years than those with young brains.

Furthermore, accelerated aging of the brain and blood vessels was found to have similar accuracy in predicting Alzheimer’s disease risk to phosphorylated tau protein, a clinical biomarker currently used to predict Alzheimer’s disease, while accelerated kidney aging very rapid is associated with high blood pressure and diabetes, while cardiac aging is associated with atrial fibrillation and heart attack, and it has been confirmed that there is a high correlation with each of them.

Professor Weiss-Corey said: “If this method is verified in a larger study, it will be possible to estimate the biological age of healthy human organs” and “By identifying rapidly aging organs, it will be possible to predict the risk of disease, prevent it and cure it.” He said: “(Seoul = Yonhap News)

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