Aging comes with a lot of changes throughout the body. Many of these aging processes leave an imprint in the blood composition. Previous research has shown that changes in blood composition resulting from exercising or aging, for example, also have an effect on various organs, including the brain. Moreover, a BPRC investigator has shown previously that treating old mice with blood from young mice has a positive effect on brain and behaviour. But how exactly does blood composition change with aging in humans?
To answer this question, BPRC scientists used public datasets to compare information from about 5,000 proteins in the blood of individuals between the age of 16 and 100. By combining information from these studies, a set of proteins was identified that appeared to be related to the age of the individuals in the same way across the different data sets. These proteins were found to be associated with various age-related diseases such as organ failure and dementia.
Age – nothing more than a number?
The amount of these proteins in the blood also turned out to be a good predictor of the age of the individuals. However, for some this was not the case. Based on their blood composition, a number of people should be much older or much younger than their calendar age. To further investigate the origin of this difference between calendar age and biological age, a few candidate proteins have been selected that may contribute to the acceleration of aging, or that may actually slow it down.
Follow-up research at the BPRC to better understand aging
The brains of monkeys at the BPRC are structurally, functionally and genetically very similar to the human brain, making them an ideal model for studying brain disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, as well as for studying healthy brain aging.
To investigate which blood factors contribute to the aging process and related brain abnormalities, we want to investigate in the future how the blood composition of our monkeys changes with age and how this resembles changes in humans. Subsequently, a link can be made in the monkeys between the changes in the blood and the brain during aging. With this, the BPRC researchers hope to eventually discover factors in the blood that provide insight into brain aging so that biological processes can be studied in a targeted manner in order to develop therapies to remain healthy and cognitively fit for as long as possible.
Want to know more? This work can be read here.