Anti-aging clock results often fail across multiple models

In a computational study, researchers analysed data from published anti-aging intervention studies, datasets of age-accelerating events, and computer simulations. Epigenetic clocks estimate biological age by tracking chemical tags on DNA. The researchers found that when extending published single-clock intervention studies to include additional clock models, no additional clocks reached statistical significance. From the age-accelerating datasets, they proposed three criteria that increase confidence in a result: reliable principal-component-based (PC-based) clocks respond, mortality-trained or pace-of-aging clocks respond, and multiple clocks respond in the same direction. Simulations showed that reliable clocks are more sensitive to true effects. In longitudinal control datasets, changes in reliable clocks correlated with each other. The researchers also showed examples of interventions that satisfied these criteria.