What Effect Do Iron Levels Have On Longevity?
A massive new study has found evidence that blood iron levels could play a role in influencing how long you live.
It’s always important to take longevity studies with a big grain of salt, but the new research is impressive in its breadth, covering genetic information from well over 1 million people across three public databases. It also focused on three key measures of ageing: lifespan, years lived free of disease (referred to as healthspan), and making it to an extremely old age (AKA longevity).
Throughout the analysis, 10 key regions of the genome were shown to be related to these measures of long life, as were gene sets linked to how the body metabolises iron. Put simply, having too much iron in the blood appeared to be linked to an increased risk of dying earlier.
Excerpted from Science Alert
