Evidence of accelerated ageing in clinical drug addiction from immune, hepatic and metabolic biomarkers

Background: Drug addiction is associated with significant disease and death, but its impact on the ageing process has not been considered. The recent demonstration that many of the items available in routine clinical pathology have applicability as biomarkers of the ageing process implies that routine clinical laboratory parameters would be useful as an initial investigation of this possibility. Methods: 12,093 clinical laboratory results 1995-2006 were reviewed. To make the age ranges of the medical and addicted groups comparable the age range was restricted to 15-45 years. Results: 739 drug addicted (DA) and 5834 general medical (GM) age matched blood samples were compared. Significant elevation of immune parameters was noted in the C-reactive protein, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, total lymphocyte count, serum globulins and the globulin:albumin ratio (P < 0.01). Alanine aminotranferase, creatinine, urea, and insulin like growth factor-1 were also significantly higher (P < 0.01) in the DA group. Albumin, body mass index and dihydroepiandrosterone sulphate were unchanged and cholesterol was lower (all P < 0.05). Conclusion: These data demonstrate for the first time that addiction is associated with an altered profile of common biomarkers of ageing raising the possibility that the ageing process may be altered in this group. Infective and immune processes may be centrally involved. They suggest that addiction forms an interesting model to further examine the contribution of immune suppression and hyperstimulation to the ageing process

Genetic determinants of exceptional human longevity: insights from the Okinawa Centenarian Study

Centenarians represent a rare phenotype appearing in roughly 10–20 per 100,000 persons in most industrialized countries but as high as 40–50 per 100,000 persons in Okinawa, Japan. Siblings of centenarians in Okinawa have been found to have cumulative survival advantages such that female centenarian siblings have a 2.58-fold likelihood and male siblings a 5.43-fold likelihood (versus their birth cohorts) of reaching the age of 90 years. This is indicative of a strong familial component to longevity. Centenarians may live such extraordinarily long lives in large part due to genetic variations that either affect the rate of aging and/or have genes that result in decreased susceptibility to age-associated diseases. Some of the most promising candidate genes appear to be those involved in regulatory pathways such as insulin signaling, immunoinflammatory response, stress resistance or cardiovascular function. Although gene variants with large beneficial effects have been suggested to exist, only APOE, an important regulator of lipoproteins has been consistently associated with a longer human lifespan across numerous populations. As longevity is a very complex trait, several issues challenge our ability to identify its genetic influences, such as control for environmental confounders across time, the lack of precise phenotypes of aging and longevity, statistical power, study design and availability of appropriate study populations. Genetic studies on the Okinawan population suggest that Okinawans are a genetically distinct group that has several characteristics of a founder population, including less genetic diversity, and clustering of specific gene variants, some of which may be related to longevity. Further work on this population and other genetic isolates would be of significant interest to the genetics of human longevity