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It is no secret that some people seem to age faster than others, especially after sustainable stressful periods. But some scientists think that the physical appearance of a person could reveal more about them than the eye sees – to the health of their tissues and cells, a concept known as a ‘biological age’.
In one New studyPublished on Thursday in the Lancet Digital Health, researchers trained artificial intelligence to estimate the biological ages of adults with cancer by analyzing photos of their faces. Participants in the study with younger estimates tend to go better after treatment than those of AI, found researchers from Mass -General Brigham.
The findings suggest that people’s biological age estimates are closely linked to their physical health, which can reflect their assets in order to survive certain treatments, according to the authors of the study. And in the future, the analysis of the face of the face can become more useful than just age to help doctors make difficult phone calls about the treatment of their patients, they added.
Face -based aging tools have “extraordinary potential” to help doctors quickly and cheaply estimate how healthy their patients are, compared to existing tests that use blood or saliva to measure chemical and molecular changes related to aging, said William Maire, a professor of public metabolism in the study. Although doctors usually visually estimate how healthy their patients are for their age, such tools can collect much more data to make a better estimate, he added.
Facage, the device for machine learning made by researchers from Mass General Brigham, discovered that study -test persons with cancer seemed five years older than their chronological age. The biological age of people without cancer was usually close to their real age. And those who were categorized as a parent would die earlier, either from cancer or other causes.
The researchers are not the first to find a connection between facial and biological aging: A study in Denmark discovered that subjects that looked older than their chronological age tend to die earlier than their twins, and other studies have come to similar conclusions.
Facage was trained in a database with more than 56,000 images of people aged 60 and older, usually from Wikipedia and the film database IMDB The researchers then asked to assess the age of participants in the study, most of whom had cancer, just the use of photos.
Doctors can use facial one day to decide whether they should offer different treatment, depending on the estimated biological age of a patient, Dr. Raymond H. Mak, a radiation oncologist at Mass -General Brigham who worked on the study.
Toni Feather, a 69-year-old hairdresser and a cancer patient under the care of Dr. Mak, was one of the participants in the study that looked younger than her chronological age. Mrs. Feather, who lives in Upton, Massachusetts, said Dr. Mak explained that her appearance – which was about 10 years younger than her age – could reflect the biological resilience, which may have helped her to resist debilitating treatments. (Mrs Feather has undergone several surgeons, chemotherapy and radiation for lung cancer, but she continues to work once a week and regularly takes care of her young grandson.)
Preliminary data suggest that Facage goes beyond the visual markings of age that we may look forward to, such as wrinkles, gray hair or baldness, and, instead, marks less obvious factors such as hollowing the temples (which reflect a loss of muscle mass) and the awareness of the skin folds of the mouth, Dr. Mak.
The authors of the study ultimately hope to commercialize technology and create a product that can be used in the doctor’s offices. They are planning to submit a patent once the technology is more developed.
The current version of the tool has limitations. It was mainly trained on white faces, Dr. Mak, so it could work differently for people with different skin tones. And it is not clear to what extent changes such as plastic surgery, makeup, lighting or the corner of the face can influence the results.
And while biological aging can be accelerated by a number of factors, such as stress, pregnancy” smoking” Alcohol and even Extreme heatSome of these changes can be reversible – And it is not clear whether the tool would tackle that changes over time.
Experts in medical ethics are also worried.
“I would be very concerned about whether this tool works well for all populations, for example women, older adults, racial and ethnic minorities, people with different disabilities, pregnant women and the like,” said Jennifer E. Miller, the co-director of the Biomedical Ethics program at Yale University.
She and others in the field also wondered whether the tool could be used to justify refusing insurance coverage or medical treatment.
Dr. Mak and other researchers who have worked on the research have also reserved. “We are really worried about potential abuse of technology in general,” he said. He added that the researchers thought that the tool would be more useful – and it could be used to support the judgment of clinics but not to replace it.
It is unclear whether the results of Facage will be more accurate, more racing or cheaper than the results of existing aids for the biological age, said Daniel Belsky, an epidemiologist from the University of Columbia and assistant professor who led the development of Dunedinpace, a commonly used epigenetic clock.
“There is a long way in between where we are today and actually use these tools in a clinical setting,” said Dr. Belsky.
