On Wednesday, April 6th, 2022, Sara Hägg, associate professor (docent) in molecular epidemiology at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, visited the Department of Public Health Sciences, where she held a presentation titled "Human biological aging: quantifications, health predictions and interventions".
Abstract
Human aging is characterized by a gradual loss of function from cells to organs to whole body systems. Biological aging processes include mitochondrial dysfunction, epigenetic alterations, telomere shortening, metabolic dysregulation, cellular senescence, genomic instability, and stem cell exhaustion that all change during aging. Several of these processes are possible to measure in human cohorts of aging using different biomarker assessments such as DNA methylation data for epigenetic clock measurements and composite scores of blood, urine and clinical biomarkers. Different biological age quantifications are correlated with each other but may also capture different aspects of aging. Moreover, they are associated with health-related outcomes such as disease diagnoses and mortality. Studies are also emerging showing that life-style factors and different interventions may change the biological age level. However, conclusions on whether or not those changes are causally related to better health and increased survival is currently not known.
