hannah_went:
Welcome to the Everything Epigenetics podcast Dr. Moffitt. Thank you so much for being on with us today.
terrie_moffitt:
My pleasure, looking forward to it.
hannah_went:
Yeah, we’re just gonna you know, jump right in here. but before we get started, I want to hear more about you. You know you. You have this Ah and Dex score of two hundred and ten. I believe you’re in the top one hundred for this and I’m sure you may be higher. Now. I just did a quick Google search and pull it from Google Scholar this morning, and for those who are listening who may not know Dr. Motet, feel free to describe this a little bit better.
But the hand, Dex, is an author level metric that measures be productivity, Citation impact of publications. And according to a first, who is the person who really created this score, a person with twenty years of research experience with an index of twenty is good. You know forty is great. Sixty is remarkable. So again, two hundred and intent, I think that’s amazing. so just tell us a little bit about that your journey. Know what have been the key turning points for where you’ve gotten today?
terrie_moffitt:
Okay. Well, thanks for bringing that up. That has been sent as little present to me
hannah_went:
Okay,
terrie_moffitt:
this week to reach two hundred and ten, so I’m excited about it. That just means that I have two hundred and ten papers that have been cited two hundred and ten times by other scientists, So that’s wake. a lot of people who have a very high hand. X people think that they have a huge team. a huge lab with lots and lots of postsocks and lots and lots of Ph. D. student. Ours is actually quite a small shop. It’s very boutiky. We have about twelve or fifteen m, staff and and trainings at university at any particular time. Um, but we do incredible, you know, team science.
so we really really work as a smooth, well functioning well oiled team, and also with our team members who are in New Zealand as well, and we like to think it’s kind of small bit Beautiful. so I got my start just very briefly by joining a longitudinal study in New Zealand of all the babies born in one town in nineteen seventy two.
the towns named Dunedin, I started there as a postock in the late nineteen eighties, and my first expert tis, at that time was in adolescent mental health, and I continued studying mental health for quite a few years, but as the study Members grew older, I had to sort of grow with them, so I had to start studying aging, because that’s the most important thing that’s happening in their lives. So in two thousand and seven, I got my first grant from the National Institute on aging, and we really pivoted and we’ve been studying aging ever since, and mainly aging during biological aging and during mid life.
hannah_went:
No great introduction. Thank you for that, and I love that you brought up that dnidnlongitudinal cohort, because that is going to be our main focus today. Right how fast are you aging? And even before that can you actually measure how quickly you’re aging?
This idea of of your pace of aging, So I know you develop this blood test that tells you how many months you’re aging biologically for one chronological year. For example, you, you give me one really great one through though email, you could be June, fourteen months per year right now, which is too fast, right or you could be aging eleven and a half months per year, which is going to be half a month slower, which is great. So this, this is called that DunedinPACE. Can you give our listeners just an introduction to this this great tool before we get into the details and then we’ll go further into how it was created?
terrie_moffitt:
Okay, Well, it’s called the DunedinPACE, as you said, And that pace stands for Dunedin, stands for the city where all of the research participants in our study we’re born and grew up, Um. and pace stands for the pace of aging calculated in the P. gino. Um. So as you said you can be on this measure, Aging slow. Are aging fast. What it tests really is how fast you’re aging at the moment. So it’s a lot like a Matter. It can tell how fast you’re going right now, and that’s that’s kind of special in this field. It came out in twenty twenty. So relatively recently it’s already been studied by more than thirty different research teams working in six different countries, studying over thirty thousand research participants.
Um. And so I’m really excited about how the field has embraced the measure and The research that’s coming out is adding to our estimate of the validity of it. Looks like people who are aging fast on it, tend to have the early onset of multiple diseases. They have elevated risk of altimer dementia. They have more rapid physical and cognitive decline and early death. Unfortunately, so it appears that all though the measure is new Is a mounting a scientific literature that is consistent with it being useful.
hannah_went:
Definitely, I think it’s having a huge impact not only in the longevity in aging space, but just health in general and even preventative health. right. There’s that idea. if we can actually prevent the onset of this accelerated aging, or you know just stuff that accelerated aging all together, then that will add a huge value in terms of the quality of life that that we may be able to have. So I love the DunedinPACE algorithm. And and you know, for those listening as well, I always get this this question so they may be Thinking the same thing. Am I pronouncing that correctly? Dr. Moffat, in Endin
terrie_moffitt:
Yes, Dunedin stands for means New Edinburgh, in Gay, Lick,
hannah_went:
Gotcha, Yeah, because I always, you know, I talked to several people about this algrathm, sometimes who are in dinin Florida, too, So
terrie_moffitt:
A right,
hannah_went:
we always asking pronunciation in the location in Florida.
terrie_moffitt:
Right, two cities with the same name on the opposite points of the globe.
hannah_went:
Exactly exactly. So how did how did you create this this DunedinPACE? And maybe even before you answer that question, a lot of a lot of people see in the literature the Denindin po, a M. So could you differentiate Denin din p M with DunedinPACE
terrie_moffitt:
Yeah, and that’s really simple because we have been following these people, all born in nineteen. seventy two. There are one thousand of them. Ninety four percent are still taking part after five decades, and we track them every five years, bringing them into the clinic, and they stay for a full day, and we study their physiological health and conditioning. We use those bio markers to then Estimate how fast their entire body is aging. So we’re tapping into their cardiovuscular health, their lung health, their muscles, their new system, their kidneys, metabolic system, even their teeth and their gums, and we’re adding vision and hearing to the model and we have brain scanning as well now so that it will only get better.
The DunedinPACE Was an early version of the measure when we had only tracked them up to age thirty eight, but since then we saw them again when they were aged forty five and twenty nineteen. so we added more data to our model to really improve its precision, and we’ve been funded by the National Institute of Aging to follow up the cohort again. Starting next year, they’ll be fifty two years old, and so in a couple of, I guess eighteen monster, a couple of years, We’ll have even another version That’s even better. So we’ve got the more data that we get, the more precise our estimates can be.
hannah_went:
Exactly? And I always think it is mind blowing. You said you, you have a ninety four percent retention rate. Was
terrie_moffitt:
That’s
hannah_went:
that correct?
terrie_moffitt:
right. Yes,
hannah_went:
Yeah, and you know and correct me if I’m wrong here as well, but an excellent or like a good retention rate is usually around sixty percent typically in science, and
terrie_moffitt:
Well,
hannah_went:
anyway,
terrie_moffitt:
you know retention rates get for studies that have been started more recently. Historically the retention rates are poorer and that, simply because people today don’t want to take part in research, they don’t want to be bothered. They don’t want to do, risk their privacy. Um, and there you people are living in a flood of information these days, So taking part in the scientific study doesn’t seem that appealing to them.
This Particular study is a bit different because it did start back in the nineteen seventies. Study members have been in it all their lives, and they tend to view themselves as sort of like a an Olympic team, representing their small country overseas, so they’re bringing medical knowledge to the rest of the world and punching way above the weight of a small country like New Zealand. So they’re proud to be in the study. We’re proud to have them, and we bend ever backward to make it Easy for them to take part every time.
hannah_went:
Great, yea, and that that has to feel good, having that unity of being in that group and being followed up with and seeing all your different health metrics, I know I would definitely be interested in some type of opportunity if I, if I had the chance
terrie_moffitt:
There’s enormous amount of good will between the scientific team Um in New Zealand and their research participants.
hannah_went:
Right. So so could you talk a little bit about what’s so unique? What’s so different from what you’ve been doing in terms of following a group? I know you can talk about some of those exposures, and in different things like that over the decades. What’s really unique? just about following these people for almost you know five decades now,
terrie_moffitt:
What’s special about it in terms of developing a measure like Dunedinpace, or the old version in P a M, is that there are other plenty of other measures referred to as clocks that measure aging and do it quite well, and those are based on their trained on date of birth, how old a person is or on outcomes such as mortality. Those kinds of things, those generate very accurate clocks. you know, just remarkably accurate. and those are the early generations in this work.
The way that this particular project is different is that we study change, so by tracking bio markers, nineteen bio markers, tracking all the different organ systems of the body over so far, age twenty, thirty, two, thirty, eight, Forty five, and next year aged fifty two. we’re really studying the delsyncronized decline of organ systems, the deterioration of the integrity of the body that happens slowly and gradually with aging. So we know it’s not sickness, because that would be short term, whereas this is a a trajectory that is going in the same direction, Um, from your twenties until you’re fifty.
hannah_went:
Right so you have this very unique cohort there being followed. You’re getting all of these types of measurements. Might my favorite one. When I talk about this with some people, they are always surprised about the gum measurements and the gum, health, and in the teeth. It’s very unique. It’s a very, very comprehensive overview that you’re doing of these patients. You’re You’re grabbing all types of different different organ systems and then those nineteen different blood based values as well. So you get this outcome and you have this piece of Asian. What is this test good for? What are people using For? Just in the research you know. Is it applicable to people in their every day life? What have you seen? and what are the applications?
terrie_moffitt:
Yeah, you know what we hope that it will be good for will be to serve as an outcome point for randomized clinical trials of anti aging therapeutics. and the reason a test like this would be useful is because if you really want to fight aging and slow down aging in order to prevent the onset of age related diseases, you have to do the fight aging part before the diseases start, so you’ll be Trying to intervene with people who are still in the middle of their life, not people who are very old.
But if you randomize clinical trial, let’s say a drug works. How will you know? Because you wouldn’t want to wait twenty thirty forty years to see if they get sick or if they die, the trial participants sounds gruesome, but that is what we need to see in order to have a drug approved to fight aging.
The kind of measure that we have devised really does track that deterioration of all the bodily systems over mid life, from twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, and we hope to keep it going until the sixties. Um, I think I think maybe that’s the thing that we started out looking for Is that is developing a measure that would be sensitive to change and could be used in clinical trials. Give it at the very start The clinical trial, give it during the middle, give it at the end and then continue giving the test years after to make sure that the effects of any successful anti aging treatment don’t fade out, but that people continue to stay younger.
That would be a holy grail. So that’s what we thought we were aiming for. To my surprise, there have been other uses uses suggested by people, So some people simply want to use a measure like DunedinPACE, if there, trying to make a major, changing their life style, so joining a gym, going on weight watcher, stopping smoking, They would, personally, as an individual, like to have a before and after test to see how well they’re doing.
So we have heard of people using it for that and then the third use that has come to my attention is that there are some um, uh, surgery clinics Have in the past when they’re trying to deterimine who would be a great candidate for a very evasive surgery. they’ve been using chronological aide and a frailty measure, but still a lot of people come out of of surgery and don’t do very well on the other end, so they’re experimenting with whether to need pace, might be a useful measure to give before surgery to help make that estimation. And what they’ll be doing is following Um, their surgical candidates until after the surgery to see how fast they come out of rehab and how well they do in physical therapy. so I’m excited to see that use emerge and we’ll have to watch and see what happens.
hannah_went:
Yeah, that that third uses is a great application. I would be very curious as well. I always get so excited when I receive a notification that a new study has been published and I see that DunedinPACE being representated.
terrie_moffitt:
Me too,
hannah_went:
There are so many different clinical trials going on. I mean, I’m sure hundreds and hundreds by now that are using this as a you know effective way to measure, you know before and after process of like you said, an anti agin supplement, Maybe in a clinical trial or even personal use. Right if you want to make a change, and then see if that change is actually affecting your aging in a positive, or maybe not so positive way. It’s always great to get that feed back To know. maybe I need to change something, or you know, stop doing X. I z. add this into my diet, so I think it’s It’s a great tool that anyone could really use.
terrie_moffitt:
You. we’re cautiously optimistic. You know, I’ve done
hannah_went:
Uh,
terrie_moffitt:
things in science.
hannah_went:
uh,
terrie_moffitt:
My career is long enough now that I’ve done things in science that failed spectacularly or that looked pretty good at the beginning, but then flocked, So you know, I guess I wouldn’t be shocked if the needing paste turned out not to be useful for clinical purposes, but we’re cautiously optimistic and we, We have heard of quite a few groups like twenty. There re twenty four research groups that are not my personal research group who have now started using it, so all eyes are on them to see what they find Because that’s really the acid test. You don’t want good findings from the original designers because of course we’re biased. You want you want to see the findings from people who have skin in the game?
hannah_went:
Yeah, we’ll have to wait and see what they come up with, so I’m
terrie_moffitt:
Yeah,
hannah_went:
excited results, but I love cautiously optimistic. That’s a great great way to look at
terrie_moffitt:
Oh
hannah_went:
it. And can you talk about the current collection method and then I’m sure people are also wondering what is the Re test window As well, You know, when can they do a base line? Maybe take a supplement, or like you said, go to the gym. Go and wait, watchers and then re test again.
terrie_moffitt:
Yeah. this is. this is a huge question. So the the data collection for implementing the test right now involves having your doctor draw a blood sample. We are working on a version that could be used in cheek swabs or in saliva and things again, cautiously optimistic. Things look pretty good. You know, it’s turned out to be harder than I thought To do that just because there are very few large studies that have collected both blood and some other tissue, Because usually it’s quite expensive to do D and a methalicmethalati, an A rays.
And so nobody wants to do them twice. They’ll choose either saliva or blood, but not both. So we’ve been anybody listening here Has those kinds of data. We hope they’ll help us out. But so far the two Three data sets that we have found or are working really nicely, But so, but today, if you wanted it today, you would need a blood test. What was the next part of your question? Hannah? I lost the end.
hannah_went:
Yeah, no worries. I’m throwing a couple o questions at you out of time
terrie_moffitt:
It’s
hannah_went:
the
terrie_moffitt:
okay,
hannah_went:
pest window. So when can someone take a base line?
terrie_moffitt:
Right, the test window At that. At this point we don’t really know what the test window is again, because repeat of DNA methalation rays in large cohort samples is still rather expensive for people working as we do. so we have in our own research, repeated the d N methalation every five years, But of course that’s not very helpful. If you’re real, Want to use the the The test Much more close to time than that. We do know that the calory study, which was the study of arandomized clinical trial, in which the treatment are participants, eight under eighteen hundred calories a day for a year. It did show on repeat testing.
After one year, it showed slowed aging, whereas the people in the control group Continued eating as normal whatever they wanted, and their aging continued going forward at the rate of one year, biologically for one year chronologically during that period, so there’s one example out there right now suggesting that you can repeat it after a year and detect a dietary change. This is. This is the. really the place where the research needs to go. Is pinning down how frequently we can repeat this test And how
hannah_went:
Yes,
terrie_moffitt:
fast we can expect
hannah_went:
definitely,
terrie_moffitt:
it to change. Sorry, I can’t say right now.
hannah_went:
No, definitely, and think, the reason I asked to is because people always want something quick. right. They want
terrie_moffitt:
Yes,
hannah_went:
to be able to change it and know that what they’re doing is helping. So I think some from from some other data as well, You know, I’ve seen people even do it. You know, base line to some type of therapy or undergo some type of surgery and then even do it a couple of days after as well, so I’ll
terrie_moffitt:
Hm,
hannah_went:
keep you up dated with my conversations I’ll have with with those researchers and some things I’ve seen in the literature. Well, maybe eight to twelve weeks may be a sweet spot, but I think again, we need some some more defined evidence for that so well, well, we’ll keep that question open ended for for more
terrie_moffitt:
That
hannah_went:
interviews.
terrie_moffitt:
sounds great. I know when you’re doing interventions that involve behavior all change. let’s say stopping smoking, or you know, going on a diet to least weight, or adopting a new course of physical activity and exercise program. People need feed back really soon.
hannah_went:
Hm.
terrie_moffitt:
They need to see change to motivate them. Otherwise, you know, if it goes on for weeks and weeks of suffering without any kind of change That’s really discouraging. So what we’re hoping is that the DunedinPACE will have a good shot at showing change in the short term, but
hannah_went:
Definitely
terrie_moffitt:
I can’t myself. I haven’t done an intervention yet to prove that
hannah_went:
Absolutely completely Understand. So you, I think you hinted at a couple of these. But what? According to the research, what tends to accelerate the DunedinPACE? What? what really makes? Um? You know, when you said spedometer, I think of like a rabbit or a hair, and like a turtle. So what? what makes it go closer to the rabbit or the hair?
terrie_moffitt:
Okay, So there are papers in coming out in the literature. Some of them are in pre print form. Some of them are already published, showing that the need pay speeds up when people start smoking. It speeds up during pregnancy. In one study it speeds up when people have Covid, are, nor in the hospital for Covid, when study suggested, and a study identified that it fed When people had traumatic surgery for a hip fracture. Those are the kinds of things that are starting to appear in the literature.
Another study showed that when people had very severe economic loss like losing their job or losing their pay checks, that the stress of that was associated with the speed up of DunedinPACE. Each of these has only been shown by one study. So far, So again, it’s really early days. you know, the measure only became available for people to use at the end of twenty twenties, so there hasn’t been much time for research yet, but there are fewse paper showing instances in which it has spit up in other people’s studies. What slows it down? Going on a Mediterranean diet slows it down. Eating less than eighteen hundred calories a day slows it down, though Kinds of things.
hannah_went:
Yeah, it’s interesting that you mentioned the pregnancy because I, you know, I work with a lot of people helping them interpret their biological ages or their DunedinPACE, And it was in the same week where I saw two women have major accelerated DunedinPACE. I’m talking about one point two, one point three. You know, I was a little nervous to speak with them. Actually, I was really trying to figure out and look at the literature. You know, what Could be speeding this this up. And
terrie_moffitt:
Wow,
hannah_went:
yeah, I ended up talking to both of them and they were both pregnant. So it was just mind blowing that again, that the pregnancy can really make that tick. You truly see accelerated denindinpasn or accelerated Agin,
terrie_moffitt:
That’s interesting and you know that that’s such an interesting avenue for perinatal researchers to follow up on because you know you don’t like to think of aging while you’re pregnant. It’s probably tapping into some other kinds of physiological changes that the body is undergoing, so we may you know, that may give us a different interpretation of the biology, but it’s fascinating.
hannah_went:
Very fascinating. and I want to mention two, because you made a good point there. The follow up right again, getting more of that longitudinal data. We we? We ended up actually testing one of the women about six months after she she had her baby, and the DunedinPACE went from again one point three, back down to around. I believe it was around one point zero. Three, maybe, or it was. You know, it was right on the
terrie_moffitt:
Yeah,
hannah_went:
cusp of one, so Verse a lot, but probably may even take more more time than than six months.
terrie_moffitt:
I love stories like this.
hannah_went:
Uh,
terrie_moffitt:
I hope that they,
hannah_went:
uh,
terrie_moffitt:
they turn out to be, you know, backed up by large ephanemiological studies, but it’s fantastic that we have hints pointing in that direction.
hannah_went:
Definitely, so we touch on this earlier to Doctor Mott, But can you point out just anything we may have forgotten about? What makes the DunedinPace different from other aging clocks? When you, when people talk about aging, you know it’s this big trend. It’s this popular word right now, the anti aging, space, longevity prevention medicine. You always hear what’s my biological age or my biological age is, so I think it’s also really important for to Just to start hearing people say my denindinpases right. I’m aging. Tis the best biologically for everyone chronological year. So can you point out any major differences we may have forgotten at the beginning Between those two
terrie_moffitt:
Um, yeah, so one of the things
hannah_went:
Yah?
terrie_moffitt:
that the clocks do because they’re based on the early clocks they’re based on trained on when you were born. That means that the aging if if your score turns out to be accelerated, that the aging that happened that accelerated your clock and brought it to an older age now than what your chronological age is, Could have happened Any time. so could have happened in infancy. No nataly in early life or lately, we just don’t know. Um, so there’s a lot of research trying to pin down the timing question. What we hope is because the need pace was trained on actual biological change in bio markers over mid life that it’s more tapping into recent change instead Change that may have happened in utero. So the training is different.
The proof will be in the pudding. So where we, our group and other research groups are working on, Um, trying to pin this down, But that’s the theory. Anything else that differentiates it from the clocks? The clocks give you an age score and needing paste gives you a Pa score Is sort of like a spedomenor. How fast are you aging now? So it. it doesn’t give you a number. That is, say I, I am sixty seven. It doesn’t tell me I am biologically sixty eight. It tells me at the moment I’m I’m aging at the rate of say eleven months a year or thirteen months a year. So it’s the that. The way that we think about the score is got to be a little bit different.
hannah_went:
Right. I always called the first generation in the second generation. Biological age clocks more of your historical processing of
terrie_moffitt:
Yeah,
hannah_went:
aging. Almost, you know, I’m not sure if that’s a good way to look at it. I think it may be because again, there’s a difference where you could have really old biological aging, but you could have a slower DunedinPACE, which means at some point in your life you, probably you definitely had accelerated aging, but at this
terrie_moffitt:
Hm,
hannah_went:
You’ve brought that back down, so you’re working on on bridging that gap between your biological age and your crown.
terrie_moffitt:
Yeah, yeah, that’s That’s a really clear and nice way to say it. And as I say this is all kind of like. This distinction is in theory, What we need to watch is find out whether the studies that are looking at effects of pre birth, things like low birth weight or those kinds of factors, maternal stress on the clocks and need pace. If they generate similar findings, Diff Findings, it will be interesting to see, or if the testing the clocks versus didn’t even pace on more recent interventions where people have really changed their life style or started taking an anti aging medication. Are these findings going to be similar or different? So we’re watching that
hannah_went:
It really will be interesting. I’m excited about all the epidemiological base studies being examined at the time as well, so it will be nice and cool to look at the data. So what’s next for the denindinpace? I know you’re taking another round of all of those organ systems, and then the nineteen different blot based bi markers at age fifty, two of the cohort. But what else? What’s next?
terrie_moffitt:
Well, you know, with any new measure you want to push the boundaries on on who it’s good for. it’s valid for. so my team is working hard on testing whether it works the same in different ethnic ancestry groups and whether it works the same as well in babies, children, adolescence, as well as mid life people, as well as very much older adults or the elder League. So we need to know how does it perform at different stages in the life course, Hopefully the same. So far it looks like the same, but we’re working on that and and with the ancestry groups. Of course you want to test that can be used for everyone and not just limited to white.
I have to say that the study M, where we developed to pace was limited to white New Zealanders, but it looks as though when we’ve applied to Needin place in African American samples in the United States, and as far away as there’s one paper that’s coming out of the Philippines, so that’s another ethnic group. It looks as though it’s performing well in those other ethnic groups as well.
Probably not. It won’t always be perfect, but we’ll pretty soon have a bigger picture of of how far we can push the envelope on using it. So that’s what we’re doing and then the other thing we’re doing is where, inviting our Thousand participants to come back into the clinic and spend a full day with us over the next couple of years, and soon will have more data on their outcomes in their fifties, which is very exciting.
hannah_went:
Awesome that all sounds great. Yes, the more data, the better right, the more we can understand and learn and really make it applicable. So
terrie_moffitt:
Yeah,
hannah_went:
very exciting. and the very very last question. I ask everyone this on on the end of my podcast, Dr. Moffitt, If you could be any animal in the world, what would you be in line?
terrie_moffitt:
Any animal, any animal.
hannah_went:
This is a curve ball question.
terrie_moffitt:
There’s a fall question. That’s a great one. I think I would love to be a gazelle, because it’s everything I’m not, which is very fast and and very elegant and and strong. So maybe it’s an alter ego kind of thing. I
hannah_went:
All
terrie_moffitt:
need
hannah_went:
three
terrie_moffitt:
a gazelle avatar.
hannah_went:
God got. Um, Yeah, just a fun question. I like to throw in there at the at the end for everyone. So this has been great, Doctor Moffitt. We come to the end of this amazing podcast. Um, So for for anyone who’s listening in your interested in taking the DunedinPACE, TruDiagnostic does offer two products which contains this amazing output. There’s the tage complete, and there’s the age Pace, So you can use the code, everything Eppie for twelve percent off, I’ll put, And the show notes for each of those those products.
In addition, the algorithm to calculate the DunedinPACE on get up where any scientist with epigenetics Pert Ts, can access it to run their data for research research purposes, so long as there’s no commercial use intended, Ince. True Diagnostic has those exclusive license in Rites to the algorithm, So thank you for joining us at the Everything Epigenetics Podcast And remember you have control over your epigenetic, so tuning next time to learn more about. Thank you, Dr. Moffat.
terrie_moffitt:
Thank you, Hannah. This was absolutely terrific. I so enjoyed it.
hannah_went:
Thanks movie.
terrie_moffitt:
Bye.
