Experiencing various forms of stress may cause aging in humans, with that aging process then being reversed when an afflicted individual recovers from the stress that caused it, a new study published in the Cell Metabolism journal has suggested.
The team behind the study postulated that “biological age is fluid and exhibits rapid changes in both directions,” noting how they managed to discover signs of young mice’s biological age being increased by “heterochronic parabiosis,” only to be “restored following surgical detachment.”
The researchers also stated in their work that they were able to “identify transient changes in biological age during major surgery, pregnancy, and severe COVID-19 in humans and/or mice.”
“Together, these data show that biological age undergoes a rapid increase in response to diverse forms of stress, which is reversed following recovery from stress,” the team claimed.
The researchers argued that the “new layer of aging dynamics” they stumbled upon should be taken into consideration in future studies and insisted that “the elevation of biological age by stress may be a quantifiable and actionable target for future interventions.”