The promising weirdness of biological age
It sounds fixed but it's not, say researchers who studied three triggers of severe physiological stress: pregnancy, COVID, surgery. In preclinical models and in humans, stress from surgery, pregnancy, and severe COVID-19 increased signs of biological age, which were reversed following recovery. “Traditionally, biological age has been thought to just go up and up, but we hypothesized that it’s actually much more dynamic,” said lead author Jesse Poganik of the Brigham’s Division of Genetics . “Severe stress can trigger biological age to increase, but if that stress is short-lived, the signs of biological aging can be reversed.” For the study , Poganik and colleagues gathered data from several situations that are likely to cause severe physiological stress. In one experiment, they examined blood samples from elderly patients undergoing emergency surgery, looking at samples collected immediately before surgery, a few days after surgery, and before discharge from the ...