New gene test tells how you are ageing

There are no drugs that work to stop dementia – and the later treatments are given, the less the chance of success. Early intervention is crucial in treating Alzheimer’s. Scientists at King’s College London have come up with a test that will help doctors decide which people could be offered preventive therapies even before the first symptoms of dementia begin to appear.

It’s also the first practical and accurate test for the rate at which our bodies are ageing.

The blood test shows how well people are ageing and can predict when diseases like Alzheimer’s will start.

Researchers have identified a set of genes which must be functioning in 65-year-olds for healthy ageing. The healthy-age gene score measures how well those genes are working. The lower the score, the more likely you already have the disease or that it will develop.

It could predict the start of Alzheimer’s

“Most people accept that all 60-year-olds are not the same, but there has been no reliable test for underlying ‘ biological age’,” said lead author James Timmons.

The gene discovery is the first marker of biological age and should transform how we use age in medical decisions.

King’s College London, Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Duke University in the USA collaborated for seven years comparing samples from people aged 25 and 65. They identified a pattern in 150 genes that you need for healthy ageing.

People with the lowest health-age gene score are far more likely to suffer from mental decline and poor health.

Most importantly, patients with Alzheimer’s had much lower scores.

There are 850,000 people currently suffering from dementia in the UK with Alzheimer’s being the most common type. The disease kills at least 60,000 people each year.

Dr Neha Issar-Brown, programme manager for population health sciences at the Medical Research Council, which funded the research, said: “This new test holds great potential. With further research, it may help improve the development and evaluation of treatments that prolong good health.”

Dr Doug Brown, Director of Research at Alzheimer’s Society, said: “With further development, this research could help in our quest to find new treatments for the condition, by identifying people who are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease so that they can participate in clinical trials.”

Dr Eric Karran, Director of Research, Alzheimer’s Research UK, added: “This study suggests a way to measure a person’s ‘ biological age’ and could reveal insights into the ageing process and why some people are more susceptible to age-related health conditions.”