from the I'm-really-sorry-for-your-ageing-head dept.
Biomarkers used to track benefits of anti-ageing therapies can be misleading:
We all grow old and die, but we still don't know why. Diet, exercise and stress all effect our lifespan, but the underlying processes that drive ageing remain a mystery. Often, we measure age by counting our years since birth and yet our cells know nothing of chronological time—our organs and tissues may age more rapidly or slowly regardless of what we'd expect from counting the number of orbits we tale around the sun.
For this reason, many scientists search to develop methods to measure the "biological age" of our cells -– which can be different from our chronological age. In theory, such biomarkers of ageing could provide a measure of health that could revolutionize how we practice medicine. Individuals could use a biomarker of ageing to track their biological age over time and measure the effect of diet, exercise, and drugs and predict their effects to extend lifespan or improve quality of life. Medicines could be designed and identified based on their effect on biological age. In other words, we could start to treat ageing itself.
However, no accurate and highly predictive test for biological age has been validated to date. In part, this is because we still don't know what causes ageing and so can't measure it. Definitive progress in the field will require validating biomarkers throughout a patient's lifetime, an impractical feat given human life expectancy.
[...] Describing their results in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, the research team found that nematodes have at least two partially independent ageing processes taking place at the same time – one that determines VMC [vigorous movement cessation] and the other determines time of death. While both processes follow different trajectories, their rates are correlated to each other, in other words, in individuals for whom VMC occurred at an accelerated rate, so did time of death, and vice versa. In other words, the study revealed that each individual nematode has at least two distinct biological ages.
[...] The researchers also found that no matter which lifespan-altering mutations and interventions they gave the nematodes, the statistical correlation between the distinct biological ages remained constant. This suggests the existence of an invisible chain of command – or hierarchical structure – that regulates the worm's ageing processes, the mechanisms of which are yet to be discovered. This means that, while ageing processes can be independent, it is also true that some individuals are 'fast agers' and others 'slow agers', in that many of their ageing processes move similarly faster or slower than their peers.
The findings have implications for consumers being offered commercial products that assess their biological age. [...]
According to Dr. Stroustrup, the solution lies in finding biomarkers that measure distinct, interacting ageing processes that also minimally correlate with each other. "Biomarkers used to assess biological age can be changed without actually turning a 'fast ager' into 'slow ager'. Researchers should focus on measuring the effect of interventions on functional outcomes rather than assuming that changes in biomarkers will predict outcomes in a straightforward way," he concludes.
Journal Reference:
Natasha Oswal, Olivier M. F. Martin, Sofia Stroustrup, et al. A hierarchical process model links behavioral aging and lifespan in C. elegans [open], Plos Comput Bio, 2022. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010415
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday October 07 2022, @05:04PM
Researchers should focus on measuring the effect of interventions on functional outcomes rather than assuming that changes in biomarkers will predict outcomes in a straightforward way," he concludes.
This applies in a lot of areas.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0, Spam) by aristarchus 2 on Saturday October 08 2022, @03:18AM
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: SN is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered SN community when IDC confirmed that SN posting has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of Slashdot. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that SN has lost more users, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. SN is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in a recent survey of news aggregators.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict SN's future. The hand writing is on the wall: SN faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for SN because SN is dying. Things are looking very bad for SN. As many of us are already aware, SN continues to lose users and subscribers. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
SN is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its users. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time SN admins c0lo and The Mighty Buzzard only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: SN is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Slashdot leader whipslash states that there are 7000 users of Slashdot. How many users of Pipedot are there? Let's see. The number of Slashdot versus Pipedot posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Pipedot users. SN posts on Usenet are about one hundredth of the volume of Pipedot posts. Therefore there are about 14 users of SN. A recent article put Hacker News at about 80 percent of the news aggregator market. Therefore there are (7000+1400)*4 = 33600 Hacker News users. This is consistent with the number of Hacker News Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of NCommander, abysmal management and so on, SN was taken over by martyb who is another troubled admin. Now martyb is also gone, and SN's corpse was turned over to Janrinok the Censor.
All major surveys show that SN has steadily declined in users and comments. SN is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If SN is to survive at all it will be among gun nuts like Runaway and khallow. SN continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save SN from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, SN is dead.
Fact: SN is dying