Study: Blood iron levels could be key to slowing ageing

Study: Blood iron levels could be key to slowing ageing

A group of scientists has now identified the genes which are linked to ageing. Studying the genes could help explain why some people age at different rates to others. The international study using genetic data from more than a million people suggests that maintaining healthy levels of iron in the blood could be a key to ageing better and living longer.

The findings could accelerate the development of drugs to reduce age-related diseases, extend healthy years of life, and increase the chances of living to old age free of disease, the researchers say. Scientists from the University of Edinburgh and the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany focused on three measures linked to biological ageing - lifespan, years of life lived free of disease (healthspan), and being extremely long-lived (longevity).

Biological ageing - the rate at which our bodies decline over time - varies between people and drives the world's most fatal diseases, including heart disease, dementia and cancers. The researchers pooled information from three public datasets to enable analysis in unprecedented detail. The combined dataset was equivalent to studying 1.75 million lifespans or more than 60,000 extremely long-lived people.

The team pinpointed ten regions of the genome linked to long lifespan, healthspan, and longevity. They also found that gene sets linked to iron were overrepresented in their analysis of all three measures of ageing. The researchers confirmed this using a statistical method - known as Mendelian randomisation - that suggested that genes involved in metabolising iron in the blood are partly responsible for a healthy long life.

TAGS : study, blood iron levels could be key to slowing ageing, blood, age, research, ifairer