Researchers seek to demystify the biology of aging
Chicago – Chicago medical researchers are studying the differences between ages of a person – how many years they have lived, as well as their biological age, their physical age.
“We are in the place of aging biology,” said Dr. Douglas Vaughan, director of the Potocsnak Longevity Institute at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “…If we can slow down aging, just a little bit, we can delay the onset of the disease and we can give people a longer range of health.”
The foundation of the Vaughan study comes from a small Amish community in Indiana, where he found that genetic variations in about 10% of the population make their average life span different from genetically in the community for ten years.
“They can teach us a lot about what we need to be healthy aging,” Vaughan said.
This work has evolved into an international examination of aging at the Vaughan Longevity Institute.
“As you get older, you want to know, like I’m going to stay sharp,” Vaughan said.
Changshou Research Institute was established in 2022. Learning participants conducted a visit for a duration of 60 minutes to 3 hours, and the follow-up provided the latest information about their health status.
“It’s really important to be able to be representative of the minority community because I want to know, how does this information measure people like me?” said Kalinda Marshall, a research participant.
The researchers used a series of tests to calculate biological age, including scanning the retina and analyzing participants’ body movements.
They also measured weight in a machine called a Bod Pod. They perform an electrocardiogram of heart function. They then used artificial intelligence to search the data mountains to propose figures of the biological age of the participants.
“Artificial intelligence gives us the opportunity to find patterns in data that we cannot find with the human brain.
This work focuses specifically on marginalized communities and people suffering from long-term medical problems.
“We are really interested in finding ways to slow down the aging of disadvantaged people,” Vaughan said.
Similar networks of laboratory studies conducted in the other three continents are underway and there are already signs of progress. In the trial, pills that mimicked genetic variations that helped the Amish live longer did the same for mice.
“So, theoretically, we can bring this Amish advantage to everyone,” Vaughan said.
