A study of 5,678 people, led by researchers from Stanford University of Medicine, showed that not only does aging vary between individuals, but the body's organs also age at different rates from one person to another.
When the organ is particularly advanced in age compared to that of other people of the same age, the person carrying it is at increased risk of developing organ-related diseases and death.
According to the study, one in five healthy adults aged 50 or over has at least one organ that is aging at a very accelerated rate.
However, it may be possible that a simple blood test can tell which, if any, organs in a person's body are aging rapidly, directing therapeutic interventions long before clinical symptoms appear.
“We can estimate the biological age of an organ in a healthy person,” said the study’s senior author, Tony Weiss-Coray, a professor of neuroscience at Stanford University. “This in turn predicts a person’s risk of developing a disease associated with that organ.”
The team, led by academics from Stanford University in California, used machine learning to assess protein levels in human blood.
The study focused on 11 major organs, organ systems, or tissues, including the brain, heart, lung, kidney, liver, pancreas, and intestine, in addition to the immune system, muscles, fat, and blood vessels.
"When we compared the biological age of each of these organs for each individual with that of a large group of people with no obvious serious illnesses, we found that 18.4% of those aged 50 or older had one organ on their "The younger ones age much more quickly than the average. We found that these individuals are at increased risk of developing disease in that particular organ over the next 15 years."
Only one out of 60 people in the study had two organs undergoing rapid aging. “They had a 6.5 times greater risk of death than someone who did not have any senescent organ,” Weiss-Coray said.
Using commercially available techniques and an algorithm of their own design, the researchers assessed the levels of thousands of proteins in people's blood, determined that nearly 1,000 of those proteins originated within one organ or another, and linked abnormal levels of those proteins to accelerated organ aging and susceptibility to disease and mortality.
They began by examining the levels of about 5,000 proteins in the blood of just under 1,400 healthy people at the Alzheimer's Research Center, ranging in age from 20 to 90 years, but most of them in the middle and late stages of life.
They flagged all proteins whose genes were four times more active in one organ than in any other.
They found 858 organ-specific proteins, and trained the algorithm to guess a person's age based on them.
“We can estimate the biological age of an organ in an apparently healthy person,” said the study's senior author, Weiss-Coray. "This in turn predicts a person's risk of developing a disease associated with that organ."
Overall, the team tested their algorithm on a total of 5,676 patients across five groups. They then used the proteins they identified to focus on each of the 11 organs they chose for analysis, measuring the levels of organ-specific proteins within each individual's blood.
The study, published in the journal Nature, revealed that specific age gaps for 10 of the 11 organs studied (the only exception being the intestines) were significantly associated with the risk of future death from all causes over 15 years of follow-up.
Having a rapidly aging organ carried a 15% to 50% higher risk of death. Over the next 15 years, depending on the affected organ.
The study showed that those with accelerated heart aging, but who initially did not show any active disease or clinically abnormal vital signs, were about 2.5 times more at risk of developing heart failure than those with hearts that were aging normally.
Those with "older" brains were 1.8 times more likely to show cognitive decline over five years than those with "younger" brains. Accelerated aging of the brain or blood vessels predicts the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, as do the best clinical biomarkers currently in use.
There were also strong associations between the degree of severe kidney aging and both high blood pressure and diabetes, as well as between the degree of severe heart aging and both atrial fibrillation and heart attacks.
“If we can reproduce this result in 50,000 or 100,000 individuals, it means that by monitoring the health of individual organs in apparently healthy people, we may be able to find which organs are undergoing accelerated aging in humans,” Wes-Coray said. Treating people before they get sick.”
Study: Humans are causing an unprecedented increase in carbon dioxide levels in 14 million years
A new study warns that the last time the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere consistently matched current levels caused by human activities was 14 million years ago.
The new study published by Science magazine concluded, among other things, that the last time the air contained 420 parts per million of carbon dioxide was between 14 and 16 million years ago.
“It makes us realize that what we are doing is completely unusual in the history of the Earth,” Purple Hoenisch of the Lamont-Doherty Observatory at Columbia College told AFP.
Until the late 18th century, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere amounted to about 280 parts per million, which means that humans had already caused a 50 percent increase in greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere and led to the planet’s temperature rising by 1.2 degrees Celsius compared to the previous level. Before the industrial revolution.
If global carbon dioxide emissions continue to increase, we could reach between 600 and 800 parts per million by 2100.
The new study is the result of seven years of work completed by a group of 80 researchers in 16 countries and is currently considered the updated consensus of the scientific community.
The team estimates that doubling the level of carbon dioxide could raise the planet's temperature by between 5 and 8 degrees Celsius, but only over hundreds of thousands of years when temperatures significantly affect Earth's systems.
Durability testing of printed scoops on the International Space Station
Press service of Tomsk State University
Specialists from Tomsk University will begin testing the durability and other properties of composite shovels printed on the first Russian 3D printer on the International Space Station.
A source at the university indicates that the scoops printed on the printer in space are a standard for studying the durability and other properties of composite products printed on a 3D printer and then using them in scientific experiments on new materials.
Alexander Vorogtsov, Vice President of the University, says: “Astronauts on the International Space Station no longer just print different models that remain as a souvenir for the experiment participants. But now, this has become part of the scientific work, so these scoops were printed to study their physical and mechanical properties, using special equipment.” "We will test it for durability, and cut it into thin slices to determine under what loads this occurs."
According to him, scientists will compare the results with their counterparts printed on Earth. Specialists believe that the quality of shovels printed in space will be higher because they were printed in conditions of zero gravity.
It should be noted that the 3D printer used to print the shovels was designed and manufactured by Tomsk University in cooperation with experts from the “Energia” company, and it was transported to the International Space Station in June 2022.
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