Posted on 01/05/2021 9:00:32 AM PST by Red Badger
A massive study published in 2020 found evidence that blood iron levels could play a role in influencing how long you live.
It's always important to take longevity studies with a big grain of salt, but the research was impressive in its breadth, covering genetic information from well over 1 million people across three public databases. It also focused on three key measures of ageing: lifespan, years lived free of disease (referred to as healthspan), and making it to an extremely old age (AKA longevity).
Throughout the analysis, 10 key regions of the genome were shown to be related to these measures of long life, as were gene sets linked to how the body metabolises iron.
Put simply, having too much iron in the blood appeared to be linked to an increased risk of dying earlier.
"We are very excited by these findings as they strongly suggest that high levels of iron in the blood reduces our healthy years of life, and keeping these levels in check could prevent age-related damage," said data analyst Paul Timmers, from the University of Edinburgh in the UK.
"We speculate that our findings on iron metabolism might also start to explain why very high levels of iron-rich red meat in the diet has been linked to age-related conditions such as heart disease."
While correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation, the researchers used a statistical technique called Mendelian randomisation to reduce bias and attempt to infer causation in the data.
As the researchers noted, genetics are thought to have around a 10 percent influence on lifespan and healthspan, and that can make it difficult to pick out the genes involved from all the other factors involved (like your smoking or drinking habits). With that in mind, one of the advantages of this new study is its sheer size and scope.
Five of the genetic markers the researchers found had not previously been highlighted as significant at the genome-wide level. Some, including APOE and FOXO3, have been singled out in the past as being important to the ageing process and human health.
"It is clear from the association of age-related diseases and the well-known ageing loci APOE and FOXO3 that we are capturing the human ageing process to some extent," wrote the researchers in their paper published in July 2020.
While we're still in the early stages for investigating this association with iron metabolism, further down the line we could see the development of drugs designed to lower the levels of iron in the blood - which could potentially add extra years to our lives.
Besides genetics, blood iron is mostly controlled by diet and has already been linked to a number of age-related diseases, including Parkinson's and liver disease. It also affects our body's ability to fight off infection as we get older.
We can add this latest study to the growing evidence that 'iron overload', or not being able to break it down properly, can have an influence on how long we're likely to live, as well as how healthy we're likely to be in our later years.
"Our ultimate aim is to discover how ageing is regulated and find ways to increase health during ageing," says Joris Deelen who studies the biology of ageing at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany.
"The 10 regions of the genome we have discovered that are linked to lifespan, healthspan, and longevity are all exciting candidates for further studies."
The research has been published in Nature Communications.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17312-3
A version of this article was first published in July 2020.
Did one million people really volunteer to have their genes coded, their medical histories recorded, and their death certificates analyzed?
Were they all Chinese? Newfoundlanders? Belgians?
I'm also assuming that the data had been adjusted for race, socio-economic level, alcohol use, tobacco use, etc., right? So all that info, too, would have to have been compiled.
So my question: Were do you find one million people (who now must all be deceased) willing to divulge all of their personal info - including DNA samples?
Regards,
My mother-in-law, 78, has to give blood almost every week because her iron levels and BP are too high............
Obviously not, but iron deficiency would seem to be the far more common issue, especially among vegetarians that I have known.
Do you mean womenopausal?
Regards,
Just about every old men who doesn’t give blood has more iron stores than he needs.
I thought it had to do with the length of your life line.
Exactly! Most of the modern world is deficient in iron. Without iron, our bodies would not utilize oxygen and our red blood cells would shrivel up and die. In fact, most middle age women are put on hormone treatment, when they actually are iron starved. Many minerals found in grains and plants, inhibit iron absorption, as well.
Too much of anything, by definition, is too much.
so how much is too much?
“ There is a much greater correlation between shorter lifespan and the element Pb.”
Particularly if it’s traveling at 1500 fps.
“ Put simply, having too much iron in the blood appeared to be linked to an increased risk of dying earlier.”
Hemochromatosis. It really sucks!
“ hereditary hemochromatosis...”
The list of conditions caused by excess iron is enough to make one parachute-less skydiving.
“ so how much is too much?”
If your cup overflow, then you know you’re on to something good.
That depends completely on how you define the needs of elderly men. As men and women get older their ability to absorb nutrients, vitamins and minerals including iron decreases greatly. This is one of the primary causes of medical problems for elderly people.
This study is brought to us via a publication which calls itself “Nature Communications”. If that does not have the sound of a leftist advocacy group. I don't know what does. Iron deficiency anaemia is extremely common in older age, particularly after the age of 80.
It seems to me having more than you need is too much. Every molecule of excess iron increases free radical damage.
For example, ferritin less than 70 ng/ml is iron deficiency. People who have ferritin of 140 ng/ml have higher triglycerides than those who have about 70 ng/ml.
Ferritin is a measure of iron stores. If people in the latter group make just two blood donations, their ferritin gets very close to 70 ng/ml.
You can simply do a test and compare how much of a nutrient each age group has stored.
With age, iron stores increase, and vitamin A stores increase.
I went for about 15 years where I had to give blood all the time (might have been once a month) because my blood iron was so high. Not hemochromatosis, but...high.
Then, it just stopped being high...:)
But, yeah...there are adverse effects to having it too high.
People who go to Chick fil A live longer.
Steve McCroskey “I picked a bad week to quit Geritol”.
To me, the article says some people need to be bled.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.