A new blood test can reveal the "true biological age" of the subject, which can be very different from the number of years that we have taken to count the old age.

About the incredible novelty British scientists told on the pages of the journal Genome Biology.

One of the creators of the test, Dr. James Timmons, a researcher at King's College London, says: "We use the year of birth, the chronological age of a person to determine everything in the world - from the cost of insurance to the possibility of medical procedure.

But most of us will agree that in their 60s people remain and feel differently. Unfortunately, until now there was no test that would allow us to calculate the true biological age of a person ".

"Our discovery provides the first opportunity to reliably assess the biological age of a person, from which one can build on medical decisions. It also provides an opportunity to determine the individual risk of diseases, such as Alzheimer's, "- explained the researcher the essence of his achievement.

To begin with, scientists have identified a set of genes that can identify healthy aging in 65-year-old people. This set can be compared with the genetic characteristics of other people of the same year of birth, determining how far they fall behind or outrun their peers. The genetic test, created as a result of painstaking work, allows not only to estimate the aging rate of a particular person, but also to accurately call his individual risk of Alzheimer's and other types of dementia.

Dr. Neha Issar-Brown, an expert from the Medical Research Council, says: "The new analysis has tremendous potential. In the future, with its help, it will be possible to significantly improve the development and evaluation of treatment methods for older people, and also to raise diagnostics and prevention of age-related diseases to a new level ".

Despite the obvious breakthrough, both the researchers themselves and independent experts agree that they are still at the very beginning of the journey and the years will come to finalize the unique technology. Work on a new genetic test is conducted with the financial support of the MRC.

medbe. en.

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