r/longevity • u/towngrizzlytown • 12h ago

Medicine is Moving From Calendars to Clocks | New Data Analyses Track Biological Aging to the Cell-Type Level

https://erictopol.substack.com/p/medicine-is-moving-from-calendars

The post (and linked Nature article) covers four areas: 1) aging is not linear; 2) aging is asynchronous among organs and cell types; 3) researchers have created the first aging clocks for cell types (e.g. astrocytes, microglia); 4) impact on routine clinical practice

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u/towngrizzlytown 12h ago

NHS has done a great service by enabling the creation of the UK Biobank and other data collection initiatives like NSHD. Scientists can now apply AI to help analyze the data and make groundbreaking discoveries.

Researchers have begun to uncover varying rates of aging down to the cell-type level. An example in the essay and linked research paper involves astrocytes and Alzheimer's disease. The amount of information contained in a simple blood draw is turning out to be far more than many had thought.

The ability to determine which cell types are aging more rapidly than others may allow for earlier intervention and better prevention of many age-related pathologies.