A new study indicates that a retinal scan might illuminate much more information about someone’s health as they age than what was previously thought possible.
This research, coming out of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, took a look at the fundus, which is a tissue within the retina that is rich with blood vessels, and concluded that doctors could better understand how people age through retina scans. They believe that this has the potential to be a lot more effective than previous measures that doctors relied upon.
They also believe that it can help doctors track how effective treatments centered around healthy aging are. With this data, the Buck Institute team believes that doctors can change treatment course if they are finding that the methods that they are using on an individual are not as helpful as they should be.
In addition to their own research, the team relied on past research that was done by the UK Biobank and Google’s eyeAge project. They concluded that the retinal scan could detect more than 39 different diseases, both within the eye and other parts of the body. They also concluded that when the scan was done on two consecutive visits that an “aging clock” could be created. This points to a concept that doctors use to help get an estimate of someone’s health in comparison to their age. It’s not definitive, but it can be helpful for establishing treatments as someone ages.
One of the great things that the researchers pointed out is that this retinal scan is completely noninvasive and very cheap to administer. This means that it will be easy to administer on a widespread basis if it is deemed to be a helpful test by the medical field.
The research team published their findings in the journal, eLife. They also conducted a genome-wide association study to help determine whether this was an insight that could impact a large number of other people that were not included in this study. Based on their findings, they believe that this is an aging test that can be universally applied. They also believe that it will be helpful when attempting to diagnose other health conditions, such as Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, and more.
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It doesn’t have to be like this.
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