How does circulating DNA contribute to accelerated aging? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:04 — 1.5MB)

Subscribe: RSS

DNA fragments found in your blood, so called circulating cell free DNA, come from your cells as they die. Both genetic material and DNA from your energy plants, known as mitochondria, can be found, and both are implicated in increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease and frailty. That’s according to research by Johns Hopkins geriatrics expert Peter Abadir.

Abadir: We think that having a lot of those fragments floating in the serum, they are seen by the immune system and the immune system triggers a response by increasing inflammation in an attempt to get rid of those fragments. But the problem is that the higher the inflammatory burden the more you're pushing that person to age faster. We were able to see a strong correlation between the mitochondrial DNA fragments levels and the serum and inflammatory markers.         :28

Abadir says future studies will attempt to see when in the lifespan the amount of cell free DNA in the blood starts to increase. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.