If your heart appears old beyond your years, so do your other organs, scans from 100,000 UK Biobank participants have revealed.
Summary
One organ’s biological age can impact that of another, scans from 100,000 UK Biobank participants have revealed. “If your heart age appears older than your chronological age, it is likely that your lungs, kidneys, bones and the brain would also appear older,” explains study co-leader Ye Ella Tian. Examining our organ clocks could eventually help doctors to better support people who have the highest risk of getting diabetes, heart disease or cancer.
We all experience the passage of time at the same rate, but each of our organ’s biological clocks can tick faster or slower. Imaging scans from more than 100,000 UK Biobank participants have now revealed that the biological age of one organ can influence the ageing of other organs and body systems.
Analysing our ‘organ clocks’ could eventually help doctors to identify and support people who are at the greatest risk of developing diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer.
A multi-organ network
Our organs can be older or younger than our chronological age suggests. For example, a 40-year-old person’s brain can appear more like that of a 50-year-old.
Brain scans as well as physical measures including blood pressure and lung capacity from more than 100,000 UK Biobank participants were used to create detailed organ age clocks for eight body systems: brain, heart, lung, kidney, liver, muscles, immune system and metabolic functions.
If your heart age appears older than your chronological age, it is likely that your lungs, kidneys, bones and the brain would also appear older.
Dr Ye Ella Tian, University of Melbourne, Australia
Examining these organ clocks allowed the researchers to decipher whether people’s bodies were older or younger than their actual age. An older organ age was linked to increased risk of chronic conditions such as dementia, chronic kidney disease and osteoarthritis.
Chronic diseases can affect the body’s entire organ network: for example, people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) had not only biologically older lungs but their brains often also seemed to be old beyond their years.
“If your heart age appears older than your chronological age, it is likely that your lungs, kidneys, bones and the brain would also appear older,” explains the study’s co-leader Ye Ella Tian from the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Organ age in the clinic
Our aim is to test people who have a predisposition or an existing risk that would mean measuring organ age could give medical professionals the insight to commence early treatments and interventions.
Professor Andrew Zalesky, University of Melbourne, Australia
Eventually, doctors might be able to estimate someone’s ‘organ age’ simply by taking routine measures such as blood pressure.
“Our aim is to test people who have a predisposition or an existing risk that would mean measuring organ age could give medical professionals the insight to commence early treatments and interventions,” Tian’s Melbourne colleague and study co-leader Andrew Zalesky told SBS news.
Before being tested in the clinic, the organ clocks need to be adapted to populations that are more diverse in ethnicity, and demographic and socioeconomic backgrounds than UK Biobank participants.
For now, if people are worried about the health of their organs, they should head for a check-up with their GP and try to take good care of their body by practicing good lifestyles, the researchers suggested in a statement.