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Chronological age cal4/25/2023 ![]() The first clocks to measure ageing were based on changes in patterns of methyl groups-chemical tags added to DNA that switch genes on and off. From the shortening of our telomeres-the caps that keep our chromosomes from degrading-to the winding down of our mitochondria to the weakening of our immune system, it’s a challenge to choose just one ageing marker. “The concept of biological age is more of an umbrella term for all the multi-systemic things that occur with age,” explains Christopher Bell, who studies the relationship between age and chronic diseases at the University of London. So, a potential sticking point arose: There is no gold standard for biological age. “We’ve been getting so many requests from companies that want to assess their supplements or anti-ageing drugs’ efficacy,” Han says.ĪI models require examples where the right answer, or “ground truth,” is already known to learn how to see it in new data-a face paired with the subject’s age, for instance. And it has potential to aid research into ageing too. Systemic inflammation, for example, shows up in sagging skin.Īccording to Andre Esteva, the founder and CEO of a medical AI start-up in Los Altos, California, Han’s work has the potential to upend preventative medicine: “If you could take a photo and get back your biological age, that could really influence your lifestyle.” With this tool, physicians could also track and manage the care of patients undergoing onerous treatments known to prematurely age people, such as chemotherapy. And certain facial characteristics are known to align with certain ailments. These facial ageing clocks track the changes our visages undergo with time: The corners of the eyes droop, the nose widens, the jowls sag, and the distance between the nose and mouth increases. The researchers created two AI-derived clocks-one that predicts chronological age and another that predicts biological age. Inspired by a centuries-old Chinese practice, in which practitioners divine a person’s health by “reading” their face, Han, a computational biologist at Peking University, and her team constructed their clock by analysing 3D facial images of approximately 5,000 residents of Jidong, China.
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