Can We Turn Back Aging?

A new study shows that it might be possible to slow or even turn-back aging by controlling the biological clock of the body.

All of us age, but nobody knows why. Previous research has linked biological aging with hormones and telomeres. But, a new study by researchers at the University of California - Los Angeles Health Sciences has found that aging is linked with internal clock of the body.

Interestingly, not all body parts age at the same rate. Breasts, for example, age faster than other body parts. The study shows how the timepiece in our genome works and how scientists could slow this process.

"To fight aging, we first need an objective way of measuring it. Pinpointing a set of biomarkers that keeps time throughout the body has been a four-year challenge," explained Steve Horvath, a professor of human genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and of biostatistics at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. "My goal in inventing this clock is to help scientists improve their understanding of what speeds up and slows down the human aging process."

For the study, Horvath looked at major studies conducted on methylation- a process that alters the way DNA is expressed. DNA methylation represses gene expression or puts it in "off" mode.

The study included 121 data sets from nearly 8,000 tissue samples taken from throughout the body. Horvath traced methylation effects' on human tissue from womb to 101 years. He then looked at how certain biomarkers change with age to develop a clock.

He tested if the clock could time biological ageing by comparing a tissue sample's chronological age with its biological age.

"It's surprising that one could develop a clock that reliably keeps time across the human anatomy," he admitted. "My approach really compared apples and oranges, or in this case, very different parts of the body: the brain, heart, lungs, liver, kidney and cartilage."

Surprisingly, some parts of the body aged according to a person's chronological age. However, breast tissues aged much faster than the rest of the body. in children with progeria, a genetic disorder that causes them to age faster, the cells' clocks appeared normal and reflected the child's true chronological age. In women with breast cancer, the clock showed that breast tissue were about 30 years older than the body.

Researchers then looked at pluripotent stem cells, the cells that have been reprogrammed into the embryonic stage.

"My research shows that all stem cells are newborns," he said in a news release. "More importantly, the process of transforming a person's cells into pluripotent stem cells resets the cells' clock to zero."