| |
Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
 | |
|
| Perceived age as clinically useful biomarker of ageing | | Author(s) | Kaare Christensen, Mikael Thinggaard, Matt McGue |
| Journal title | British Medical Journal, vol 339, no 7735, 19 December 2009 |
| Pages | pp 1433-1434 |
| Source | www.bmj.com |
| Keywords | Ageing process ; Biological ageing ; Attitudes to the old of general public ; Longevity ; Twins ; Over 70s ; Evaluation ; Denmark. |
| Annotation | This is an abridged version of a paper, which aimed to determine whether perceived age correlates with survival and important age related phenotypes. As part of the Longitudinal Study of Ageing Danish Twins (LSADT), a population-based study of 1826 twins aged 70+, this follow-up study determined survival of twins up to January 2008, by which time 675 (37%) had died. 20 nurses, 10 young men, and 11 older women, acted as assessors who determined perceived age of twins from photographs. Twins were subjected to physical and cognitive tests and molecular biomarker of ageing (leucocyte telomere length). For all three groups of assessors, perceived age was significantly associated with survival, even after adjustment for chronological age, sex, and rearing environment. Perceived age was still significantly associated with survival after further adjustment for physical and cognitive functioning. The likelihood that the older-looking twin of the pair died first increased with increasing discordance in perceived age within the twin pair - that is, the bigger the difference in perceived age within the pair, the more likely that the older looking twin died first. Twin analyses suggested that common genetic factors influence both perceived age and survival. Perceived age, controlled for chronological age and sex, also correlated significantly with physical and cognitive functioning as well as with leucocyte telomere length. Perceived age - which is widely used by clinicians as a general indication of a patient's health - is a robust biomarker of ageing that predicts survival among those aged 70+ and correlates with important functional and molecular ageing phenotypes. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-100803201 A |
| Classmark | BG: BH: TOB: BGA: SVR: BBK: 4C: 76K * |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
|
| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
| |
|