Monday, January 15, 2007

Biological Aging Predicts Heart Attack

People Who Age Fast Are at Highest Heart Attack Risk; Statin Drugs May Help WebMD 1/11/07 "Does our "biological age" really predict death and disease? Scott W. Brouilette, PhD, and colleagues have previously shown that telomere length in people who have heart attacks before age 50 and in people who are candidates for triple bypass surgery tends to be shorter than telomere length in healthy people of the same age and sex...In their current study, the researchers looked at people enrolled in a clinical trial of the cholesterol-lowering drug Pravachol. Over five years, 484 patients developed heart disease. The researchers compared their telomere length in white blood cell DNA to that of 1,058 matched people who remained free of heart disease. Sure enough, those who got heart disease had telomere lengths similar to those in the comparison group who were six years older. ...Brouilette and colleagues suggest that statin drugs may slow biological aging not by lowering cholesterol but by increasing blood levels of a molecule that stabilizes telomeres..."

The last sentence appears to be theory only. But what an interesting theory.

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