French and US scientists are developing a simple blood test to indicate how long you might live.
The researchers at California’s Buck Institute for Research on Aging and Toulouse’s Universite Paul Sabatier have developed a method for assessing ‘intrinsic capacity’ – the sum of a person’s mental and physical capacities as a measure of ageing – from a single drop of blood or saliva.
Intrinsic capacity (IC) is defined by the World Health Organisation as ‘all the physical and mental capacities that a person can draw on and includes their ability to walk, think, see, hear and remember’.
The new study, published in Nature Aging, found measuring DNA methylation in blood samples to assess intrinsic capacity effectively predicts all- cause mortality. The test could be used to track ageing and guide targeted interventions to maintain mental and physical function as people age.
Prof Thomas Holland at Chicago’s Rush University (not involved in the study) told medicalnewstoday.com: ‘This test uses DNA methylation patterns, chemical tags that regulate gene activity, to estimate your IC biologically, offering insights into how well your body is functioning compared to your chronological age.
‘This test can be done with a simple blood or saliva sample, making it accessible and non-invasive. It tells not just how old you are, but how well you are ageing, which is much more meaningful to help inform which interventions should be implemented, if any, to help prevent future health problems.’
Using data from 1,014 people aged between 20-102 years, the researchers developed an IC score using five aspects of age-related decline: cognition; locomotion; sensory (vision and hearing); psychological; and vitality.
From blood and saliva tests, the researchers collected data on DNA methylation – a process that activates or deactivates genes; DNA methylation changes over time because of developmental mutations and environmental factors, and abnormal methylation patterns have been linked to several diseases.
The study found DNAm IC was strongly associated with overall health; people with high DNAm IC had better lung function, faster walking speed, greater bone mineral density and were more likely to view themselves as healthy. And people with a high DNAm IC lived, on average, 5.5 years longer than those with a low DNAm IC.
