We usually talk about chronological age. But there is another new type of age that doctors on Stanford 1000 Immunomes Project are able to determine. It is called immune age and it has fairly good predictive capacity of aging.
The study
Researchers on Stanford 1000 Immunomes Project assessed 50 inflammatory markers called cytokines in blood of volunteers and linked it with aging, inflammation, body fraility, and chronic illnesses. Gene activation and immune responses were also carried out in the collected cells.
They also estimated these in adults over 60 years, over 65 years, and in centenarians. They used artificial intelligence (AI) called deep neural network to estimate the immune age or iAge.
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| Immune age metric (Source: Live Science) |
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They found that the most important cytokine was CXCL9. This cytokine level predicts body and cardiovascular health and was also a strong predictor of immune age. When genes for CXCL9 was knocked out in collected vascular endothelial cells, their functions improved. This could form a basis to stop age-related increases of CXCL9. Currently, the inflammation halt cannot be segregated from halt on immune function of body and this is not good.
Thus immune age can predict about a person's immune age and measures could be taken to try to modify lifestyle in those who have higher iAge.
Higher levels of cytokines was seen in people with increased frailness and 2 or more chronic diseases. The researchers also found that 70% of the centenarians had a below-average iAge compared to their true age, but in the younger group, only about 23% had the same. The fact that 30% of centenarians did not have lower iAge implies that besides inflammation, other factors are also at play in the human bodies.
Expert opinions
Emily Goldberg, an assistant professor who studies age-related inflammation at the University of California, San Francisco opines:
"One of the things I think is most exciting about iAge and other aging clocks is their predictive capabilities,"
"It holds the potential to forecast health outcomes in time for people to modify their behaviors to prevent chronic age-related diseases,"
But one does not know how iAge determination would fare in larger diverse groups of people.
Dr. Luigi Ferrucci, the scientific director of the National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Aging feels:
"the problem in the field has been that 'inflammation' is too [much] of a generic term, and we cannot truly curtail inflammation without severe consequences on health,"
Luigi added:
"I would disagree that this is a measure of immunological aging since iAge can't predict how well someone's immune system will respond to vaccination or infection, for instance,"
But it can track biological aging, he added.
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