Higher levels of your own DNA circulating in your blood may be a problem, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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DNA fragments found circulating in an older person’s blood are associated with frailty and Alzheimer’s disease, studies by Peter Abadir, a geriatrics expert at Johns Hopkins, and colleagues have shown. These long term studies of several hundred older adults also found that the more DNA was found, the more quickly things deteriorated.

Abadir: Higher genomic DNA fragments was also linked to steeper decline. So everybody as we age we walk slower but the higher the levels at baseline were associated with deeper decline in both cognitive function and increased frailty over the eight years of the study. What matters most to our older adults, they don't care whether this is genomic or mitochondria, whether it's floating in the serum or it's inside the mitochondria, but what does it mean. Our research is just opening new possibilities for early detection and intervention strategies for dementia and frailty.         :33

Additional studies will look at when DNA amounts increase during the lifespan. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.