New Research Says Stress-Induced Aging Can Be Reversed

A new study suggests that our biological age – a measure different from one’s chronological age – may be reversible. An international team of researchers found markers of biological aging that appear to increase following stressful events such as major surgery, pregnancy or a serious infection, and then return to baseline levels after a period of recovery from these stressors.

Slowing down, let alone reversing, the effects of aging is a dream for medical and health entrepreneurs. Our growing understanding of the natural malleability of DNA, in which chemical tags are added or removed by cells, changing the way genes are expressed, makes research in this area attractive. These changes, called epigenetic, can reflect a person’s exposure to lifestyle and environmental factors such as malnutrition, infection or stress in childhood or later in life.

In this way, epigenetic changes mark the passage of time and can be used as a molecular ‘clock’ to estimate the biological age of tissues and organs compared to a person’s chronological age. Scientists can also estimate biological age by measuring the length of telomeres – telomeres are protective caps at the end of chromosomes that shorten each time cells divide.

Studies looking at telomeres have shown how stress on new doctors or multiple pregnancies can age cells beyond their years. Longevity research in the past has often looked at ways to lengthen telomeres as a way to extend the lifespan of animals. But identifying ways to rewind epigenetic clocks has become a more recent focus.

“Despite the widespread acknowledgment that biological age is at least somewhat malleable, the extent to which biological age undergoes reversible changes throughout life and the events that trigger such changes remain unknown,” explains Harvard Medical School molecular biologist Vadim Gladyshev, who co-authored the new study.

New Research Says Stress-Induced Aging Can Be Reversed

This is not to say that scientists have not encountered surprising results in the past that suggest biological age is reversible, even in humans. Research shows that despite the damage an unborn baby does to its mother’s body, the chronological age of a mother’s cells during pregnancy appears ‘younger’ than it should.

And researchers conducting a small clinical trial in 2019 realized that a cocktail of three common drugs can knock several years off a person’s biological age. This new study, which used multiple epigenetic clocks to measure how biological age changes in response to stress in animal models and human data sets, also suggests that stress-induced aging episodes may be only temporary.

“A clear pattern that emerged over the course of our studies is that exposure to stress increased biological age,” write the researchers in their published paper.

“When the stress was relieved, biological age could be fully or partially restored. This is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by our analysis of biological age changes in response to major surgery.”

Blood samples from elderly trauma patients undergoing emergency surgery showed increases in biological age markers that returned to baseline one week after surgery. This pattern mirrors results from mice that were surgically joined and then separated. However, patients who opted for elective surgery showed no signs of accelerated aging.

Finding a signal among the noise of millions of cells bustling with activity is difficult, so the researchers compared multiple epigenetic clocks. Interestingly, no changes were detected in some of them. Still, the researchers think their findings show that the body can reverse biological aging processes.

But it is one thing to observe fluctuations in bodily processes and quite another to try to use them therapeutically to reverse the effects of aging.

The body is capable of so many extraordinary things that modern medicine can barely replicate, and we don’t yet know if these temporary changes in cellular aging have any lasting or detectable health effects.

Source: Biological age is increased by stress and restored upon recovery: Cell Metabolism
Stress Biologically Ages Us, But New Research Says It Could Be Reversible : ScienceAlert