Reversing age: dual species measurement of epigenetic age with a single clock

Jaybee00 · May 12, 2020

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.07.082917v1

Preprint

twitter thread here
https://twitter.com/user/status/1259912928695857152

Jaybee00 · May 12, 2020

Better here

https://twitter.com/user/status/1259917157711974403

Jaybee00 · May 12, 2020

We employed these six clocks to investigate the rejuvenation effects of a plasma fraction treatment in different rat tissues. The treatment more than halved the epigenetic ages of blood, heart, and liver tissue. A less pronounced, but statistically significant, rejuvenation effect could be observed in the hypothalamus. The treatment was accompanied by progressive improvement in the function of these organs as ascertained through numerous biochemical/physiological biomarkers and behavioral responses to assess cognitive functions. Cellular senescence, which is not associated with epigenetic aging, was also considerably reduced in vital organs. Overall, this study demonstrates that a plasma-derived treatment markedly reverses aging according to epigenetic clocks and benchmark biomarkers of aging.
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From Twitter thread...

So are the result believable? I see nothing wrong with the epigenetic clock analyses, the stats - Horvath is the best there is. It's also hard to see how the other measures could be messed up. Controls Sure, I'd like to see more controls, quantification of images, etc. 19/n

If this finding holds up, rejuvenation of the body may become commonplace within our lifetimes, able to systemically reduce the risk of the onset of several diseases in the first place or provide resilence to a wide variety of infections. 22/n
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Jaybee00 · Jun 2, 2020

comment on this paper located on the preprint website

There are many odd things embedded in this paper. The first is that, despite enormous resources and an un-scoopable result, the treated sample size (N=6 biological reps) is incredibly small compared to the measured population.

It is unclear why, given access to almost 600 rodents and enough resources to measure their methylation profiles, only six biological replicates were included. Most scientists with this level of resources would seek to replicate such an amazing result, to exclude error or contamination. Given the rather huge claims made here, therefore, it seems highly unusual that only 18 rats in total were actually used for the experiment, and that the experiment was not replicated.

That is, given the researchers have access to a huge number of rats of known age, and are claiming to reverse aging, why would you fail to make absolutely sure of it by measuring more rats? It is not like they lack the resources, and the experimental intervention (injecting plasma into rats) is painfully simple.

Several obvious controls are also missing from the experimental design.

It is also striking that the PDF of this preprint has three times as many downloads as abstract views, and thirty times as many PDF downloads as HTML views. This pattern is completely unlike the organic download patterns of other preprints.

Given that any (non-automated, human) viewer has to view the abstract to reach and click the PDF download, this suggests somebody has written a bot-scraper to help their download count.

It could be suggested that this preprint is not targeted at sound, replicated science but rather represents a carefully calculated bid for good press for "Nugenics" and "Elixir" sales.
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Reversing age: dual species measurement of epigenetic age with a single clock

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