Biomarkers of aging: From primitive organisms to humans

Robert N. Butler, Richard Sprott, Huber Warner, Jeffrey Bland, Richie Feuers, Michael Forster, Howard Fillit, S. Mitchell Harman, Michael Hewitt, Mark Hyman, Kathleen Johnson, Evan Kligman, Gerald McClearn, James Nelson, Arlan Richardson, William Sonntag, Richard Weindiruch, Norman Wolf

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

146 Scopus citations

Abstract

Leading biologists and clinicians interested in aging convened to discuss biomarkers of aging. The goals were to come to a consensus, construct an agenda for future research, and make appropriate recommendations to policy makers and the public-at-large. While there was not total agreement on all issues, they addressed a number of questions, among them whether biomarkers can be identified and used to measure the physiological age of any individual within a population, given emerging information about aging and new technological advances. The hurdles to establishing informative biomarkers include the biological variation between individuals that makes generalizations difficult; the overlapping of aging and disease processes; uncertainty regarding benign versus pathogenic age-related changes; the point at which a process begins to do damage to the organism, and, if so, when does it occur; and when to distinguish critical damage from noncritical damage. Finally, and significantly, it is difficult to obtain funding for this research.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)560-567
Number of pages8
JournalJournals of Gerontology - Series A Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences
Volume59
Issue number6
StatePublished - Jun 2004

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