Metabolomic sweet spot clock predicts mortality and age-related diseases in the CLSA
Watch on YouTubeVideo summary
The presentation introduces a novel molecular tool called the "metabolomic sweet spot clock," designed to predict mortality and age-related diseases within the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging (CLSA). Unlike traditional biological clocks that rely solely on chronological age or linear correlations, this new model addresses the significant heterogeneity in how individuals experience aging. The core concept posits that for many health markers, there is an optimal range of values—a "sweet spot"—associated with peak health and longevity. Deviations from these specific optimal levels indicate dysregulation and accelerated biological aging, rather than just a simple increase or decrease relative to the population average.
To construct this biomarker, researchers analyzed data from nearly 10,000 participants at baseline, focusing on endogenous metabolites which reflect the cumulative impact of genetics, environment, diet, and lifestyle. The methodology involved identifying phenotypes where variance was significantly higher among less healthy individuals compared to healthier ones, thereby pinpointing optimal values for over a hundred traits including glucose levels and specific amino acid derivatives. By calculating the Euclidean distance between an individual's metabolite abundance and these identified sweet spots, the model creates a non-linear transformation that accurately captures complex aging patterns while remaining interpretable. This approach successfully distinguished faster agers from slower agers even in smaller test sets and demonstrated strong associations with all-cause mortality.
When compared to established epigenetic clocks like Horvath's or PhenoAge, the metabolomic sweet spot clock showed superior performance in predicting death and a broader range of age-related conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, kidney failure, and stroke. The study also revealed that metabolic aging shares some common biology with epigenetic changes but captures unique biological information not found in DNA methylation data alone; combining both layers further improved predictive accuracy. Furthermore, the model validated findings from an independent cohort of "SuperAgers," confirming its ability to detect subtle differences between extremely healthy elderly individuals and age-matched controls without relying on prior disease diagnoses at recruitment time.
The clinical implications of this research are profound, offering a pathway toward personalized health assessments that can identify specific biological pathways driving aging before overt diseases manifest. By quantifying deviation from optimal metabolic states, clinicians could potentially guide lifestyle interventions or pharmacological treatments to modulate biological age and prevent future health risks. Ultimately, the study suggests that healthy aging is akin to a complex "magic cocktail" with an unknown recipe; however, this research provides significant clues into its composition by highlighting how maintaining metabolites within their narrow optimal ranges contributes to resilience against disease and extends lifespan.
Read the full video transcript
Okay, well, welcome everyone. My name is
Jennifer Boyko. I'm the senior manager
of scientific operations with the
Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.
Thank you for joining the CLSA webinar
today that is entitled metabolomic sweet
spot clock predicts mortality and
age-related diseases in the Canadian
Longitudinal Study on Aging.
Before we begin, I would like to
acknowledge that the CLSA National
Coordinating Center and McMaster
University are both located on the
traditional territories of the
Mississaugas and Hodena Shani Nations
and within the lands protected by the
dish with one spoon wampum agreement.
The BC Cancer
Center in Surrey is located on the
unceded traditional and ancestral shared
territories of the Katzie, Kwantlen,
Kwikwetlem, and Semiahmoo and Tsawwassen
Tsawwassen, sorry about that, First
Nations.
Simon Fraser University respectfully
acknowledges the Musqueam, Squamish,
Tsleil-Waututh,
Katzie, Kwikwetlem, the Keightley, the
Kwantlen, the Semiahmoo, and the
Tsawwassen people and those whose
unceded traditional territories our
three campuses reside.
As attendees of the webinar today, I
encourage you to continue your learning
following the webinar and to acknowledge
the original inhabitants of the lands
where we currently have the privilege to
do research, live, and work, wherever
that may be for you.
Now, let's review a couple of
housekeeping points. Everyone but the
presenters will be muted throughout the
webinar. If you need to change or test
your audio during the webinar, you can
click on audio settings that's on the
bottom of the Zoom window.
At the end of today's session, there
will be a question and answer period. If
you have a question for the presenter
during the webinar, you can post it in
the Q&A box, which is located in the
bottom toolbar. All the questions will
be addressed at the very end of the
webinar, and um
questions will be visible to all
attendees.
If you have any technical trouble
concerning the webinar, please use the
chat box to communicate with our webinar
team. Uh a feedback Finally, a feedback
survey will be launched at the end of
the webinar, and we do invite you to
complete it after exiting the Zoom
session today. Uh the brief evaluation
does provide us with important feedback
that we can use to plan future webinars.
Now for today's webinar, again entitled
Metabolomic Sweet Spot Plot Predicts
Mortality and Age-Related Diseases in
the Canadian Longitudinal Study on
Aging, presented by Olga Vishnyakova,
who is a postdoctoral fellow at the BC
Cancer Research Institute and the
Department of Biomedical Physiology and
Kinesiology at Simon Fraser University.
Dr. Vishnyakova holds a Bachelor Science
and Master of Science degrees in Applied
Mathematics, as well as a Master of
Science in Computing Science from
Radboud University and a PhD in
Computational Biology from Simon Fraser
University. Uh her research focuses on
healthy aging using multiomic approaches
to study heterogeneity in aging and also
the biological mechanisms underlying
resilience.
So, welcome to our presenter as well as
all of you today, and I look forward to
a great session. Over to you.
>> Thank you, Paula, for the introduction
and uh
for having me here today.
Um
And also for your interest in our work.
I'll walk you through the
challenges in the field that might
related this research.
How we use untargeted metabolomic data
from CLSA
uh
to overcome this challenges
and introduce the sweet spot clock, a
molecular predictor of aging
to investigate
how we age.
We know that age is
a universal process, yet each individual
experiences differently.
Although chronological age is a major
risk factor for many age-related
diseases, cancer, diabetes,
cardiovascular disease,
still it does not consistently predict
disease susceptibility, treatment
response, or variability in aging
trajectories.
The search in aging investigate this
variability on multiple scales.
It may look at macro level
at the scale of a whole body, and here
we may uh
we may look at frailty, cognitive, or
physical function.
And we use instruments such as frailty
index, osteological load, uh or
comorbidity index.
Next, we may focus
at a specific system and investigate
variation in cardiovascular health,
neurological
um function, or skeletal health.
Molecular biology can look even deeper
on a several resolution and look at
uh
cardiomyocyte
senescence, microglial activation, or
specific
skeleton uh
cell dysfunction.
But, going even deeper into a
single-cell resolution,
we can look at difference in and health
at the level of a specific components of
a cell organelles and determine the
reason of for mitochondrial dysfunction,
energy plant of cells, or lysosomal
impairment compromising
um waste center of a cell.
Finally, we may go go as deep as
uh the level of the micro level of omics
and try to find the root of these
differences
in each of patterns at the molecular
level starting from a genetics or
blueprint
and further down the road uh through
DNA modification,
gene expression, uh
translation into protein and their
degradation. And that allow us to
investigate the genetic predisposition
for specific disease or identify
disregulated pathway. So, my my token
fiber search focuses on this bottom
layer
uh
and on the high resolution scale.
So, what is aging? It's often described
as time-dependent decline in function
that results in accumulation of cellular
uh damage over time.
And it might manifest as through, for
instance,
mitochondrial dysfunction or genetic
instability and that contribute to
cancer.
But on the bright side,
for some people,
it's not the case. Some people
experience an early onset of age-related
diseases, while others remain remarkably
healthy well into old age.
And this
heterogeneity of aging and
actually
the main question, why do some people
stay biologically younger?
That's exactly what drives this
research.
So, what is biological age?
It might be described broadly as a level
of age-dependent biological changes,
such as molecular or cellular damage
accumulation.
But in
aging research, we are dealing DNA
way more simple uh calculation and it's
treated as a numerical value, which
corresponds to the chronological age at
which an average individual in a
reference
population displays
similar age-related biological changes.
So,
if we age
faster than an average uh person in a
population, uh we are saying that
this person is a faster aging and vice
versa. And if we are
age slower than an average one, so we
are talking about slower aging.
And the question is why we even bother
of measuring this biological age. There
are multiple reasons. One is uh
is really straightforward. We can
quantify individual deviation from some
normative aging patterns. How different
is a specific individual from an average
person in a population?
But they also can identify factors
including modifiable
risk factors. Some of them are known and
others still unknown associated with
accelerated or decelerated aging.
And other way we also can identify some
life course events that drive the
divergence and aging trajectories.
Ideally, when this biomarkers of
biological age, we can assess the effect
of longevity interventions.
Uh just because
in contrast to some animal models, we
cannot wait for 10, 15, 20 years in
order to assess the quality of this
intervention. So we do need some proxy
for mortality in order to see how good
we are in terms of uh specific uh
clinical intervention.
And the idea of measuring biological age
on a
molecular level has been gaining
traction for over a decade. And the
early attempt to build this biomarkers
uh using uh telomere length
uh
until in 2013
Dr. Horvath introduced his well-known
Pan Tissue Horvath's uh
clock. And actually he coined the term
biological clock.
And since then uh many other um
biological clocks using different omics
data appeared
uh using data such as um
gene expression uh or proteomic or uh
metabolomic.
Basically, how this models work. So, we
are using
some type of data in the data, in a
protein abundance or metabolomic
abundance or
gene expression data.
Feed them into some complex or
less complex model starting from
multinomial regression uh
tree-based model
or then some neural networks in order to
predict uh biological age.
And
even though the many models exist
already,
we still do have some challenges with
the quality of this models.
First of all, as all data-driven models
suffer,
uh we have a limited specificity.
And we cannot adapt kind of ask answer
question, do these molecular biomarkers
reflect true drivers of aging?
Or they also
uh have some consequences of aging in it
or some unrelated
uh
signals just because they correlate with
some true drivers.
We also some models, especially
tree-based model or neural network-based
model, uh have some problems with
interpretability
just because we cannot clearly answer
what individual feature represents.
The other problem and then the other
challenge is the choice of a train
targets. We do have a pure generation
clock um trained on on
chronological age. We do have a second
generation called
uh
trained on mortality.
So, the question is, what should serve
as a primary training target
to predict not just mortality, but a
broad range of age-related outcome?
And we do have two
other challenges in the field such as
non-linearity,
especially when the
multinomial regression models,
how can we account for complex
relationship to capture more realistic
pattern
uh
such as non-linear patterns while
preserving interpretability of the
model?
And finally, we know that aging is
multi-dimensional.
So, the question is, can a single omics
layer,
uh let's say epigenetics, capture it
all? Or do we need many different
uh omics in order to make a prediction?
So, in response to these challenges,
uh we
started to work on omics-based
aging biomarkers
with an ambitious uh aim
to make it
interpretable and focus on
relevant features, account for
non-linearity,
choose a project training in such a way
that we can predict not just mortality,
but multiple age-related diseases.
We also want to
discover some disease-related pathways,
and ideally use
for these predictions.
So, to build this biomarker,
uh we're
we use data from Canadian Longitudinal
Study on Aging,
which allow which provides really
rich uh participant profiling with uh
genetic data, metabolomic data, DNA
methylation data, and also
uh
rich phenotypic phenotypes.
We used uh obviously a comprehensive
cohort with almost data available at the
baseline.
So, first question that we asked was can
we identify measures relevant to health
and healthy aging?
And if we can,
can we determine the optimal ranges
so we can further account for
non-linearity?
And when we talk about health and
healthy aging, we first should define
what is it health.
And there is no simple answer to that
question. Otherwise, what we are doing
here?
So, we
used five different instruments to
assess health
that try to capture different aspects of
health.
First, we
calculated
the deficit accumulated frailty index,
which is uh
we used 51 health deficit to represent
overall health.
After that, we
focused on
multi-m-
morbidities, and we uh split it into
two, and I'll explain uh
further why we did it. So, we first
calculated as a a normalized number of
five major diseases,
uh cancer, cardiovascular diseases,
major pulmonary diseases, dementia,
diabetes, and
complemented with 28 self-reported
clinical diagnostic condition as the
instruments uh number three. Also, we
calculated cognitive and physical
function scores
to capture
uh again different aspects of health.
We normalized to to unit interval.
So, we have a scores from zero to one in
order to make possible to compare
between this.
And if you're interested, so here is our
correlation between our instruments.
So, once we have this, we know that
some uh person is more or less healthy
than
other one.
Uh we started
to to
investigate how exactly we can identify
this
health-related phenotypes.
And we
used our observation from the SuperAger
study. This study was launched in our
lab more than 20 years ago.
SuperAger phenotype was defined as being
85 years and older and never been
diagnosed with a five major diseases uh
that comprise our instrument number two:
cancer, cardiovascular disease,
diabetes, dementia, and uh major
pulmonary disease.
That was uh this uh
almost 15 or even more years of
recruitment resulted in a 700 SuperAgers
each
85 to 110
recruited in BC. And these are
physically
and
cognitive uh high-functioning group. So,
here are just the sum um means for uh
common test for elderly people such as
time up and go or
mini mental state exam.
What we observed in this
remarkable group that
our initial hypothesis was that they
should have a telomere length this uh
protective cap uh on a chromosome longer
than an average uh population. However,
no difference in mean were observed
between two groups. But what we did see
in and the reduced variation in telomere
length compared to midlife controls.
Also, similar
patterns were observed for other
um
hematology data such red blood cell
count, hemoglobin, or
uh red cell distribution width. No mean
difference, but difference in variance.
So, we used this idea
uh in order to generate what a
simple parameter's one hypothesis that
measures that are important for health
tend to be closer to some optimal values
or
sweet spots
among the healthiest individuals.
What is
important here is that by measuring the
distance from the sweet spot, we can
quantify the level of dysregulation
and inform this regarded processes.
And this deviation from sweet spots also
can serve as non-linear transformation
uh
when we are talking about some complex
model
down the road.
This idea of a was
formalized into statistical two-step
statistical approach where we first
screening
uh phenotypes of interest where we are
uh
variance uh heterogeneity across health
extremes meaning that we are
comparing variance between most healthy
and least healthy groups.
And after that, we estimate optimal
phenotypic values
uh where deviation up from this values
linked to poor health. And we are doing
this using segmented regression with a
three knot points.
Applying this framework uh to phenotypic
data and available in CLSA,
we were able to identify more than a
hundred of phenotypes
with significantly higher variance among
the less healthy. What we started from
phenotypes
but not from uh complex more complex
middle moment data because we first of
all we wanted to
uh validate uh this idea
and understand whether statistic can
help us to identify related features
where we
do not introduce any prior biological
knowledge. So, our results suggest that
indeed we can
identify
health-related phenotypes that make
sense just because we know that they
make sense.
When the
mhm
hemoglobin A1C an indicator of an
average blood sugar
uh
that showed the strongest evidence of
difference in variance
across
both sexes and all age groups.
Also, majority of these phenotypes were
appeared to be
uh, related to health in both sexes. Uh,
some of them
were
unique
for
either females or males.
Another key finding
that uh, what I derived from this from
the first from the first step of this
uh, study
in that uh,
that 40% of our of the invest of the
phenotypes of interest
exhibit the sweet spots. And here just
one example for pre-adoption
how we can uh, can determine that a
specific phenotype
has a sweet spot.
And another uh, important observation
that
uh,
confidence intervals were uh,
identified sweet spots appeared to be a
narrower than a standard clinical
reference interval. Here is just one
example uh,
you have the interval confidence
interval for
uh,
for thyroxine identified
with the thyroid index as a
uh, health instrument compared to a
reference for the reference intervals.
What we did next, we cross-checked
identified optimal ranges uh, with the
uh,
clinical reference intervals used in a
life lab or Sinai Memorial Hospital lab.
And for majority of blood chemistry
biomarkers,
uh, we did have a match with an
exception to
cholesterol and HDL.
One of the reason for that is that we
probably should be more Now,
we do know that there are many South
Asian participants on study.
Uh probably
that stopped the analysis and
identification as we did not see a clear
picture
of the true distribution of this
uh
phenotypes.
So, with that, we're moving forward and
uh we ask ourselves, how does the
metabolome reflect variation in aging
across individuals?
All right, first couple of words, why
metabolomics is so important and what
are they? Metabolome is a collection of
all metabolites
that which are small molecules in body
and metabolome is the end product of
metabolism.
And it is the end result of all
environmental and biological processes.
From starting from
protein degradation,
medication intake, our nutrition
patterns, how we exercise, whether we do
have any uh exposure from some chemicals
or even some exposure, whether we
exposed to some level of stress. What
are our sleeping patterns? Do you sleep
well? All of these impact our
metabolome.
What is also important that about 30% of
identified genetic disorders involve
defects in small molecular metabolism.
And this metabolite, these small
molecules,
act as cofactors and signal molecules
for cell events of proteins.
Given this important importance,
uh we did start from
uh metabolomics data available in CLSA
to calculate this uh metabolomic
biomarker.
We were at two valid CLSA, so we do have
uh
a data for almost 10,000 participants at
the baseline.
We specifically focused at endogenous
endogenous metabolites produced by our
body
that might be a
kind of
categorized uh metabolites might be
categorized
uh based on the super pathways. The
majority of being liquids,
uh lipids, and some
uh smaller groups such as amino acids,
cofactors, and vitamins, uh nucleotides,
and so on.
Um we restricted our analysis to
metabolites
uh with less than 20% missing rate.
And that resulted in this nice number 88
uh
metabolites for our analysis.
So, we applied uh the statistical
framework I was talking uh previously to
this complex metabolomic data,
and we were able to identify 178 or
20% that 20% of metabolites showed
significantly
uh higher variance in healthy
individuals.
Uh
so, we looked at the two biomarkers, and
they completely make sense.
For instance, uh N6,N6,N6-tri
uh
methyllysine
as a the
the the derivative of amino acid lysine
and it's a component of histone protein.
Or
the the second hit was uh glucose.
Obviously, we all know how glucose is
like a fuel
important to your body.
And this health-related metabolites, all
178 of them, we use as a predictor of of
metabolomic age.
Next, we wanted to account for
non-linearity, so we calculated sweet
spots. So, we determined optimal level.
We're able to do that for 74 metabolites
out of these 178.
What uh
The remarkable result here that
more than a half of them
95% confidence intervals for identified
sweet spots did not include population
mean.
So, we assume that that might be partly
because the all the Canadian population
might
and it might be a quite a strong claim
not healthy enough in order to maintain
an optimal
um
value of a specific optimal abundance
for a specific metabolite.
What we did with this
many many uh small molecules and their
abundance
uh again, they were used as an input to
a
to a model
for those metabolites where
that exhibit the sweet spots, we
performed the transformation.
Specifically, we calculated the
Euclidean distance uh between a sweet
spot and uh measured metabolomic
abundance in a specific person.
And here the transformed or
untransformed whether where we do not
see any non-linear patterns
where after that fit to a
plastic net which is a
double penalized regression multi
multinomial regression model in order to
predict health index. Why health here?
Again, we didn't want to use a
materiality as an outcome cuz we did did
want to see
uh changes not
directly linked to the
later in life changes. We want our
biomarker to be predicted to multiple
uh conditions not just mortality. So, we
choose some
um
composed uh
representation of health status.
And here what were our results are
So, we
basically
compared
this biomarkers against uh
some
uh baselines. So, we
were interested whether this
transformation makes sense. We also
wanted to know whether
uh choice of target is right and we
obviously compared with a frailty index
itself.
Uh so
uh
And obviously it's all this uh
The results are on a train so we split
in a train and test set made all the
uh training on a
train set and assessed the quality of
the model on a test set. It's It's
pretty small so it's 1,200 of
participants. So, that's why probably
you won't see any
uh um
extremely
uh strong
uh association with mortality, but
nevertheless, uh,
the model and how it was built
definitely makes sense.
What we
uh, did after that, we calculated this
mm,
we assessed biological age,
and here is a regression uh, so we
regressed on the age.
Above the regression line uh, line,
we're talking about partici-
participants healthy partici- age faster
than average, and below
uh, are slower agers. What we also
observed is that
uh,
metabolic age deviation, there's
differences uh, with higher amount
females than males.
Next, we are
measured association with ultimate
challenge and age-related disease
between this molecular metabo-
metabolomic molecular biomarker, and
and uh,
uh,
diabetes, cardiovascular uh,
so represented by strokes, uh, kidney
failure, Alzheimer, cancer, and
pulmonary diseases.
We did observe uh, strong association
with mortality even on our smaller mm,
uh, test set.
Uh,
mm, but not for Alzheimer's and cancer.
And again, there is a reason for that.
Uh, dementia was an exclusion criteria
uh, and the time of recruitment,
and um, the metabolomic data were
uh,
available only at the baseline.
So, we did not expect to have uh,
to see much for Alzheimer's. Same for
cancer, too heterogeneous, so we had too
uh, many uh, too too
We just had a few for each type in a
on a in a death set so that's pretty
predictable.
So in order to understand what that is
means so what does this mean to have a
hazard ratio of
1.08
for all cause mortality so what we did
just to get an intuition behind that was
put participants into a four parts for
equal parts and compare the survival
probability for each of them for
slower stagers and for faster stagers
and now it's kind of
now we feel what that is mean and after
that we
went a little further and we looked at
two extremes uh, fastest and slower
agers
and here the difference in a survival
uh, even more pronounced.
So obviously we measured association
with the health lifestyle and social
economic factors and we observed
expected
association in expected direction
obviously on nutrition smoking alcohol
consumption all of this contributes to a
uh, faster aging while
uh,
income and level of education reduce uh,
uh,
how about biological age.
Uh, so what we also wanted to know
whether our
metabolites that were we used as a
predictors
as it's a data driven model so it's um,
made some
uh,
feature selection
uh, during the training process. So, we
will wonder whether this uh, features we
mean after selection make sense,
biological sense.
So, what we did, uh,
we used 50 top predictive metabolites
selected by the model and looked at
association between them and 14 known
disease biomarker chronic condition and
diagnostic measurements or all of what
we can found.
Uh,
find at that point and all of these
metabolites showed strong association
with at least five distinct phenotypes
after multiple testing direction.
Here is just uh, piece of the results.
Uh,
not suggesting to look over, but just to
explain that
indeed, each of this metabolite makes
total sense.
Um,
uh, it's associated with uh,
multiple,
uh,
diagnostic condition.
We also uh, performed the validation of
this result in super seniors. And for
that, we
uh, performed the meta- uh, metabolomic
profiling for super seniors and
age-matched control exactly the same way
as it was done for CLSA data.
Uh, the metabolome
uh, had the same uh, control samples
just to
to be as close
for validation as possible.
And that resulted in a
um,
positive results, obviously.
Uh, so, we did observe that
uh,
um,
biomarker trained on CLSA data and
applied to uh,
uh, Sebastian data set
uh was able to catch a difference
between
uh healthy and uh age-matched controls,
the extremely healthy individuals in
terms of our phenotype and age-matched
controls and was associated with
significantly associated with mortality.
Uh what we also wanted to look
uh
is where our metabolomic biomarker
stands compared to
uh well-known epigenetic, highly
promoted epigenetic biomarkers.
Uh Hannum and Horvath clocks are
available at the baseline and um
um
with the part of comprehensive uh cohort
data set, we also calculated
state-of-the-art uh GrimAge boosted
version and PhenoAge using
uh BioLearn
Python library generally provided by uh
Biomarker Aging Consortium.
And what we
observed and that our Swiss Port uh
clock
based on uh metabolomic age deviation
outperformed
uh epigenetic biomarkers and was
stronger stronger associated with
mortality.
I obviously acknowledge that uh GrimAge,
PhenoAge, and Hannum and Horvath clock
were trained on a a different data set
uh that I believe here years best
participants, while Swiss Port clock was
trained on even on a separate uh
training set, but still on a CLAC, so we
expected to
uh
or the this
metabolomic biomarker to perform better.
Yes, there is definitely some bias, but
nevertheless,
we might be better, which is good. What
we wanted to
you know, uh and uh
I already expressed that
uh
we want to know
um that
whether multiple layers capture
uh unique bi- whether each layer capture
unique biology or not. So, for that, we
actually
uh built a
uh multinomial model and used our
biomarker and pre-image as a predictor.
And that actually improved uh
uh the performance of the model measured
by a concordance index.
So, indeed,
different layers capture different
biology.
So, we obviously ask ourselves whether
first of all, whether we can do better
than pre-image in terms of uh developing
biomarkers.
And
whether these two uh epigenetic-based
and metabolic-based
share
something common.
Uh couple of words about uh epigenetics,
if we still have time. So, it's a
heritable changes in gene expression
without altering DNA sequence.
And if we In simple words, how we can
think about epigenetic, we do have a
multiple cell types. We do have a muscle
cells. We do have a uh immune cells. All
of them cells, but they express
different
uh it's but
but each of them have a different gene
expression. And that is
with the help of this methylation
pattern that either uh
silence uh some gene expression or allow
them to be expressed.
Um, and the promise that
epigenetic achieved by environmental
development and aging, and that also
might be impacted by our habits such as
smoking. So, the question is whether we
can use this DNA methylation pattern in
order to build this biomarkers.
And again, we looked at two different
level of changes such as
different differentially methylated uh
uh position upon the genome, and
differentially variable position upon
the genome, and uh
aggregated into regions, and that
resulted in uh
epigenetic biomarkers.
What we
also observe in that there is a almost a
little overlap within these two.
And using this information, we were able
to build a
with a quite a fancy model mm epigenetic
biomarkers where we first predicted
uh
health status, and after that, we
weighted this prediction using mortality
data.
Uh
It makes sense. So, we we showed that uh
this uh
model makes sense where you compete
against uh
uh benchmark models.
What is uh relevant to today's talk in
that uh
there is a just a moderate correlation
with metabolic and epigenetic
biomarkers.
Each of them have a
So, genetic component. Uh each of them
might be partly explained by immune
uh lifestyle, socioeconomic factors.
However, each of them still have this
large portion of unknown which is still
need to be investigated.
So, the main takeaway
in that we proposed methods
and that uh
allowed to identify measures related to
health and health the healthy aging and
by measuring deviation
uh from them, we can quantify the level
of this correlation.
Uh we also showed that our omics
biomarkers were predictive of mortality
and onset of age-related diseases.
Uh talking about utility
uh and the major clinical implication is
that using this or similar models, we
can create individualized health report
cards that pinpoint this relation
pathways
and
able to predict future health risk
complementing
uh genetic risk score.
Now, we also uh with help of these
biomarkers that might help guide
lifestyle and uh prevention efforts. And
going forward, we can investigate how
lifestyle or pharmacological
intervention can modulate
biological age deviation and integrated
multiple omics
and a single uh
by may maybe assembling single all omics
prediction, which is the easiest way we
can improve uh
uh the prediction ability of such
biomarkers. And that would
wrap up my presentation with this nice
comparison. I love to think about
healthy aging as a magic cocktail
and unfortunately, we just don't know
its recipe. So, I want to believe that
our study
uh made us tiny bit closer to the secret
of this recipe. We just need to I don't
know. Dig deeper. And with that, I want
to acknowledge uh both of my labs, my
main and supervisors, lab members,
collaborators, and obviously our
participants. Without them, uh
this research would not be possible. And
thank you for for listening.
>> Okay.
Well, thank you very much, Dr.
Vishnyakova. Um we will go on to some
questions now. Um in the Q&A. Some of
the I know the first question I pre-read
it is is long, so I'm going to read it
out loud and maybe you can also read
along and then reply to Walter. Uh
really interesting research. Thanks for
sharing. In the association of
metabolomic age deviation with with
age-related disease and all-cause
mortality on slide 34, the odds of the
individual disease outcomes, such as
diabetes, stroke, etc., were relatively
similar. Um would I interpret this to
mean
that Oh.
Sorry. Would I interpret this to mean
that metabolomic age deviation is a
precursor of disease and death, but the
specificity regarding risks for specific
conditions is still unknown?
>> The I'm just double-checking that. It's
still
And it's not exactly the same, but
similar. Although, well, partly because
we incorporated uh metabolites related
to each of these diseases.
Just because we trained on healthy
index, where
and healthy index already include uh
markers, uh not markers actually, but uh
a health deficit, such as uh
whether person was diagnosed with
diabetes or cardiovascular at all and it
was treated equally in quality index.
So, we included metabolites related to
each of these diseases as a predictor of
metabolomic age. Uh
Yes, we're In terms of answer to this
question, it's not specific to a single
disease.
But we're still able to catch this
regulation leading
to each of these diseases.
I hope that makes sense.
>> And the next question,
uh fascinating work. If I interpreted
interpreted correctly, you observed a
sex difference in the distribution of
the sweet spot clock. Can you comment on
what may be responsible for this?
>> Honestly, so uh indeed we
uh performed all this analysis
stratified by sex. So, we acknowledge
that adjusting uh for sex
uh would not result in a proper
estimation.
Uh
The biology work differently.
And we expected to have a hormone level
for metabolites that are precursors to
uh sex hormones
to have
different uh
optimal levels between sexes. So, that's
totally
uh
makes sense.
Yeah, but that's an answer.
>> Um
Okay, and uh the if there's any more
questions, just a reminder if anybody
does have any more questions to type it
into the Q&A box. Uh but for now we have
this last one. Could you please recap
the calculation of the sweet spot.
>> Sure. So, it's a two-step statistical
framework. So, first we looked at
difference in variance using
Brown-Forsythe test for
heteroscedasticity.
We looked at two extremes
and uh
statistically
tested the difference in variance.
And after that, the
uh
metabolites that passed multiple test
correction after the first step, on them
we tried to
uh
to apply the segmented regression model
with a single knot point and looked
whether we observed any change of trend.
And if we did, we looked at the
direction of changes
if uh
direction was consistent with our
expectation. We treated this knot point
as a sweet spot.
>> Okay, well, I think we will slowly start
to wrap up. Then, I'm sure if anybody
has any other questions, they can reach
out to you directly. Uh but, for now I'd
just like to thank you very much and I
also would like to do an extra special
thanks because I know you jumped in at
the last minute to do this webinar. Um
so, much appreciated. Uh but, I'd now
like to remind everyone that the next
deadline for data access applications,
if you're interested in doing your own
research, is July 8th, 2026.
Please visit the data access section of
our website to review what data is
available uh as well as additional
details about the application process.
Also, a reminder for all CLSA data users
to keep us updated on any changes that
may affect your data access agreement.
Um have you moved institutions or has
your research team changed or has a
trainee graduated or moved to a new
position? Um you can always reach us out
to us at access
clsa
with any questions or updates.
I'd also like to remind everyone to
complete your anonymous survey upon
exiting the session today.
The CLSA has introduced an updated data
access fee structure
effective October 2nd, 2025.
The first adjustment since we actually
launched the platform more than a decade
ago. This update supports a sustainable
cost recovery model that will help us
maintain
exceptional quality and stewardship of
CLSA data for years to come. And if
you'd like more information about this,
please visit our data access webpage on
our website or you can click on the link
that's provided in the chat.
And lastly about our upcoming
webinar. The details of our next webinar
are still being finalized, but you can
visit our website
under webinars to stay up to date on the
next webinar.
If you or a colleague are interested in
presenting a CLSA web webinar, please
reach out to our to us on our webinar
team. We would be glad to hear from you.
And the recording from today's webinar
and the slides will be available in the
coming days on our website.
Finally, you're invited to fill out the
exit survey that will appear right at
the end of this webinar. And thank you
all for your attendance today. And then
again, thank you to Dr. Vishnu Kolla.
Bye everyone.