Humans could stop ageing but not reverse it: Study

SINGAPORE: The biological process behind human ageing can potentially be stopped but not fully reversed, according to a research, not yet peer-reviewed.

The study published on the preprint server BioRxiv, leveraged the advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning to understand the mechanics of ageing and how it works in the human body.

The study analysed a key component in ageing called "resilience."

The team assessed a factor called thermodynamic biological age (tBA) that sheds light on the biological information lost in an organism with age. tBA tracks the extent of disorder produced in an organism as it ages, the Independent reported.

They said that as tBA increases with age, it could lead to lower resilience in the person, driving an "exponential acceleration" of chronic disease incidence and risk of death.

"According to our measurements, the number of people demonstrating the loss of resilience increases in the population exponentially and doubles every eight years, exactly as fast as the mortality rate doubles," Peter Fedichev, a co-author of the study and Chief of Gero, said in a newsletter.

This shift is irreversible, the team said, adding that it could set severe constraints on age reversal possibilities.

Previous studies have shown that ageing is a complex process which leads to an exponential acceleration of the incidence of chronic diseases and ultimately the death of organisms.

While recent studies have demonstrated potential age reversal in mice with hopes the process could be extended to humans, Dr Fedichev said the case may be different for humans.

But "not all hope is lost," the team said.

There could be a way to "cool down" an organism, control the chaos in the molecular interactions in its cells and reduce the rate of ageing, the report said.