Overview: Muscle weakness characterized by grip strength was associated with accelerated biological aging, a new study reports.
sauce: University of Michigan
Everyone ages at a different pace. So two of her 50-year-olds may have different biological ages despite living the same number of years. This means that we age at different rates and have different levels of risk of disease and early death due to many intrinsic and extrinsic factors. .
Lifestyle choices such as diet, smoking, and illness all contribute to accelerated biological age beyond chronological age. In other words, your body is aging faster than expected.
And for the first time, researchers found that muscle weakness characterized by grip strength, a proxy for overall muscle strength capacity, was associated with accelerated biological age.
Specifically, the weaker the grip strength, the higher the biological age. Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle.
Researchers at Michigan Medicine used three DNA methylation-based “age-accelerating clocks” to model the relationship between biological age and grip strength in 1,274 middle-aged and elderly individuals. The clock was originally modeled from various studies looking at diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, disability, Alzheimer’s disease, inflammation, and premature death.
The results reveal that both older men and women showed an association between reduced grip strength and biological age acceleration of the overall DNA methylation clock.
“We knew that muscle strength was a predictor of longevity, and that muscle weakness was a strong indicator of disease and mortality, but there is a significant difference between muscle weakness and the actual acceleration of biological age. For the first time, we have found strong evidence of a biological link,” said Mark Peterson, PhD, MS, lead author of the study and Associate Professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the University of Michigan.
“This suggests that maintaining muscle strength throughout life may prevent many common age-related diseases. For example, smoking is a strong predictor of disease and mortality. We know it’s a factor, but we also know that muscle wasting could be the new smoking.”
The real strength of the study lies in its eight to 10-year observations, where lower grip strength predicted faster biological aging as measured after 10 years, said study co-author Jessica Faul, Ph.D. , says Master of Public Health. She is a Research Associate Professor at the UM Institute for Social Research.
Previous studies have shown that decreased grip strength is a very strong predictor of adverse health events. One study found it to be a better predictor of cardiovascular events such as myocardial infarction than systolic blood pressure, a clinical feature for detecting heart disease. , showing strong associations between wasting and chronic disease and mortality across populations.
This evidence, combined with the recent findings of their study, points to the potential for clinicians to adopt the use of grip strength as a method of screening individuals for future risk of functional decline, chronic disease, and even early death.
“Screening for grip strength will provide an opportunity to design interventions to slow or prevent the onset or progression of these adverse ‘age-related’ health events,” he said. .
“We have been urging clinicians to start using grip strength in the clinic, but only geriatrics incorporates this kind of thing. I’ve seen hundreds of publications that show it, but not many people use it.”
The researchers say future research is needed to understand the relationship between grip strength and accelerated aging, including how inflammatory conditions contribute to age-related weakness and mortality. .
Previous studies have shown that age-related chronic inflammation, known as ‘inflammation’, is a significant risk factor for mortality in the elderly. This inflammation is also associated with reduced grip strength and may be an important predictor of pathways between reduced grip strength and multiple disorders and chronic diseases.
Additionally, Peterson says research needs to focus on how lifestyle and behavioral factors, such as physical activity and diet, affect grip strength and accelerated aging.
“Healthy eating habits are very important, but I think regular exercise is the most important thing you can do to stay healthy throughout your life,” he said. We can show it with biomarkers like, and we can test it with clinical features like grip strength.”
See also
Other authors include Stacey Collins (MA), Helen CS Meier (Ph.D., MPH), and Alexander Brahmsteadt (MD) from the University of Michigan.
About this Aging and Strength Research News
author: Noah Fromson
sauce: University of Michigan
contact: Noah Fromson – University of Michigan
image: Images credited to Justine Ross of Michigan Medicine.
Original research: open access.
“Grip strength is inversely proportional to accelerated DNA methylation ageBy Mark D. Peterson et al. Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle
Overview
Grip strength is inversely proportional to accelerated DNA methylation age
Background
There is extensive evidence linking muscle wasting, as determined by decreased grip strength, to many adverse health effects associated with aging. Given these links, grip strength has been called a ‘biomarker of aging’. Still, the pathways linking grip strength to adverse health effects are unclear. The aim of this study was to determine whether grip strength is associated with measures of DNA methylation (DNAm) age acceleration.
method
Middle-aged and older adults from the Health and Retirement Survey with 8- to 10-year follow-up from 2006 to 2008 were included. We performed cross-sectional and longitudinal regression modeling to examine the association between normalized grip strength (NGS) and his three measures of DNAm age acceleration, adjusting for cell composition, sociodemographic variables, and smoking. did. Longitudinal modeling was also completed to examine the association between changes in absolute grip strength and DNAm age acceleration. The three DNAm clocks used to estimate age acceleration include the well-established DunedinPoAm, PhenoAge, and GrimAge clocks.
result
There was a robust, independent, cross-sectional association between NGS and accelerated DNAm age in DunedinPoAm-treated men (β: -0.36; P. < 0.001), Phenoage (β: -8.27; P. = 0.01) and Grimage (β: −4.56; P. = 0.01) women using watches and DunedinPoAm (β: −0.36; P. < 0.001) and Grimage (β: -4.46; P. = 0.01) clock. There was also an independent longitudinal association between baseline NGS and accelerated DNAm age in men (β: −0.26; P. < 0.001) and females (β: -0.36; P. < 0.001) using the DunedinPoAm clock and only PhenoAge for females (β: -8.20; P. < 0.001) and Grimage (β: -5.91; P. < 0.001) clock.Longitudinal modeling revealed a strong association between changes in grip strength from the first wave to the third wave for PhenoAgeAA (β: -0.13; 95% CI: -0.23, -0.03) and GrimAgeAA (β: -0.07; 95 % CI: −0.14, −0.01) males only (both P. < 0.05).
Conclusion
Our findings provide the first evidence of age acceleration in men and women with low NGS and declining physical fitness over time. Future research is needed to understand the extent to which DNAm age mediates the association between grip strength and chronic disease, disability, and mortality.
