Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

HUMAN AGING

Youthfulness begins in youth

Nature Aging volume 1, pages 239–240 (2021)Cite this article

Subjects

Chronological age fails to capture how the process of aging differs between individuals. Variability in rates of biological aging in youth is related to anatomical and functional differences already visible by midlife. This portends substantially different aging outcomes that have individual- and societal-level implications.

We all know older people who seem to be much younger than their age — individuals who not only look younger but who have a youthful outlook, intellect and vigor, and who have avoided many age-related diseases. Conversely, there are those less fortunate who appear older than their years and who may have experienced more than their share of disability and illness. Indeed, one of the most well-recognized phenomena of aging is its variability; older people are more different from one another than are younger people, and most biological measurements occur over a wider range in older people1. On the other hand, within individuals, variability is lower such that people who are doing better than average for their age on one measure generally do so on multiple measures. This situation can be conceptualized as a discrepancy between chronological age and biological age, the latter reflecting the health status of multiple organ systems in a person. While we think of people at the extremes of this chronological/biological discrepancy as having good or bad fortune in the ‘genetic lottery’, in fact, we can measure many different factors that may reflect both genetic and environmental origins of biological aging. By measuring the appropriate variables, we can potentially estimate the rate of biological aging, open the door to understanding how aging differs between individuals and potentially predict health outcomes. A number of different biomarkers have been employed to assess biological aging, including DNA methylation2,3, telomere length4 or multiple blood measurements of organ system function5. A relatively unexplored area is the use of longitudinal measurements that can provide an actual estimate of change in age-related parameters over time. In this issue of Nature Aging, Elliott and colleagues6 following the Dunedin cohort show that longitudinal laboratory measurements of multiple organ systems in youth can model individual rates of biological aging that are related to a variety of important aging outcomes already visible by middle age.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Fig. 1: The effects of aging are highly variable between individuals and have their origins in early life.

References

  1. Morse, C. K. Psychol. Aging 8, 156–164 (1993).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  2. Chen, B. H. et al. Aging 8, 1844–1865 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Levine, M. E. et al. Aging 10, 573–591 (2018).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Blackburn, E. H., Epel, E. S. & Lin, J. Science 350, 1193–1198 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Sebastiani, P. et al. Aging Cell 16, 329–338 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Elliott, M. L. et al. Nat. Aging https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-021-00044-4 (2021).

  7. Dickerson, B. C. et al. Cereb. Cortex 19, 497–510 (2009).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Karama, S. et al. Mol. Psychiatr. 19, 555–559 (2014).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  9. Lu, K. et al. Neurology 93, e2144–e2156 (2019).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Kremen, W. S. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 116, 2021–2026 (2019).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  11. Walhovd, K. B. et al. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 113, 9357–9362 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Health and Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    William J. Jagust

Authors
  1. William J. Jagust
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to William J. Jagust.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

W.J.J. has served as a consultant to Genentech, Roche, Biogen and Bioclinica.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Jagust, W.J. Youthfulness begins in youth. Nat Aging 1, 239–240 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-021-00048-0

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-021-00048-0

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing