A recent study revealed the age at which the human body accelerated its aging significantly. To do this, scientists have analyzed hundreds of human tissues.
The work of time. As revealed by a Chinese study published on July 25 in the scientific magazine Cell, a team of scientists has shown that the human aging process was experiencing a clear acceleration at a specific period of life.
According to these experts, it is located on average between 45 and 55 years, 50 being the median age heralding this acceleration.
Thanks to the 516 samples of human tissue that they received from donors aged between 14 and 68, all having suffered from a death due to cranial trauma, Chinese researchers compared analyzes on all human organs, in several stages of human life, which they are part of the cardiovascular, digestive, immune, endocrine system.
Gas6: protein at the base of aging
And their result is final: if the body experiences disparate aging, each organ advancing at its own pace in time, a common acceleration of the process comes between the age of 45 and 55, especially because of the effects linked to 47 hormones of the body. This increase in the production of these substances would cause faster aging, according to the researchers.
The study has shown that this evolution of hormones was not felt in the same way on all human organs: from 30 years, changes appear in particular in the aorta, arterter which arises at the base of the left ventricle of the heart. Gradually, this impacts the whole body, a few years later: “temporal analyzes show that there is an inflection of aging around 50 years, the blood vessels taking age even earlier”, explained the author of this study, Guanghui Liu.
Researchers notably discovered that a protein named Gas6 was primarily responsible for this phenomenon. Also called “specific gene 6”, it has been injected with certain patients by scientists, who observed premature aging of certain organs, loss of balance but also visible damage on the vessels of these people. “Blood vessels seem to act like corridors leading the molecules at the origin of aging”, hence their great vulnerability, as explains once again Guanghui Liu.
