Chris Driver <drierac at deakin.edu.au> suggested:
> A method that may be of use to you is to measure collagen elasticity.
> This is old technology and seemed to work in experimental situations very
> well. There will be experimental error and it will depend on metabolic
> conditions (=?diet)
Chris,
I'm not sure this is perfectly relevant, but I remember reading a paper
by a gerontological researcher named Deyl in the mid 70's. I believe
she is either Hungarian or Czech and published in the journal "Experimental
Gerontology." (I could be wrong on the journal, though.)
She was trying to establish whether collagen crosslinking was a good
biomarker of ageing in mice. (or was it rats ?) She found that mice
that exhibited the most rapid rate of crosslinking were also the
longest lived, contrary to expectations. However, she did find that
the percentage of whole body weight that collagen comprised was in fact
predictive of longevity (more collage --> shorter life).
I believe that there were significant individual differences in the rates
of collagen crosslinking between individual mice, so I'm not sure
if crosslinking alone gives an unambiguous measure of age even when all
other variables are held constant.
Regards and Happy New Year,
Lou Pagnucco (lpagnucco at delphi.com)
