Youthful Appearance A Key to Living Longer

Kaare Christensen, from the University of Southern Denmark, and colleagues studied 1826 twins, ages 70+, conducting a battery of physical and cognitive tests as well as blood tests for telomere length.   Death records were used to track the survival of the twins over a seven-year period.  A group of assessors evaluated the twins for their perceived ages via photographs of the subjects' faces. The team found that perceived age was significantly associated with survival and lifespan.  They also found that perceived age also corresponded to physical and cognitive functioning, as well as length of the telomeres of leucocytes (white blood cells).  Further, the researchers found that the greater the difference in perceived age within a twin pair, the more likely it was that the twin who looked older died first.  The group concludes that: “Perceived age … is a robust biomarker of ageing that predicts survival among those aged 70 [and over] and correlates with important functional and molecular ageing phenotypes.”