It’s not clear why this is, but João Pedro de Magalhães, who studies aging at the University of Birmingham in the UK and was not involved in the study, thinks it might have something to do with the recipient’s immune system. Perhaps immune cells circulating in the blood might affect markers of aging in the new organ, he says.
Perhaps the potential rejuvenating effects of a young heart end up being diluted by all the other aged components of an older body, Poganik suggests. Or maybe a single organ just isn’t enough to see an effect.
Poganik hopes his finding will encourage surgeons to consider using hearts from older donors, many of which are discarded on the assumption they won’t function as well. (Machines used to preserve organs before transplantation are changing that already—and Poganik has worked on another study showing that these devices seem to rejuvenate donor livers to some extent.)
But the study also highlights just how complicated aging is. If organs seem to be getting older by one measure but not by another, how can we get a full picture of the biological age of an organ, or a person?
This complexity means that scientists are not likely to discover a true way to completely reverse aging, says Poganik. “That would mean that every aspect of aging has to go back in time,” he says. Reversing DNA damage, structural damage, and all the other degradations that are part of the aging package, across all our various cells and tissues, presents an enormous challenge.
“There are aspects of biological age that are probably reversible, and there are aspects that are probably not,” he says. Sorry, Putin.
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.
