Grandparent scam: London, Ont., senior beats fraudsters not once, but twice
It was a typical Tuesday for Mabel Beharrell, 84, until she got the call that would turn her world upside down. Her teenaged grandson was in trouble and needed her help.
Living with HIV may have an immediate effect on how your body ages, according to new research which showed that cellular aging was sped up in male patients within two to three years of infection.
Researchers with University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) looked at blood samples from more than 200 men to compare those infected with HIV to a control group who did not have HIV, and scored them on five different measures of aging.
The study, published Thursday in the journal iScience, found that those living with HIV showed aging that was 2-5 years ahead of non-infected counterparts within three years of infection.
“Our work demonstrates that even in the early months and years of living with HIV, the virus has already set into motion an accelerated aging process at the DNA level,” Elizabeth Crabb Breen, professor emerita at UCLA’s Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology and lead author of the study, said in a press release. “This emphasizes the critical importance of early HIV diagnosis and an awareness of aging-related problems, as well as the value of preventing HIV infection in the first place.”
HIV is a virus that attacks the body’s immune system, leaving the patient vulnerable to serious illness from even mild diseases or medical issues. In advanced stages, it can lead to AIDS, in which the immune system is severely damaged. There is no cure for HIV, but those who are living with HIV can manage it safely and prevent themselves from passing it on with current treatments.
As of data from 2018, around 62,000 people in Canada are living with HIV.
Scientists have previously theorized that HIV and the antiretroviral therapies that keep the infection under control could contribute to this accelerated aging, but this is one of the first studies to directly compare infected and non-infected people to look at this question, according to the release.
Researchers used data from the Multicenter AIDS Cohort Study, an ongoing study that began in 1984.
They looked at blood samples taken from 102 before they became infected with HIV and then two to thee years after infection, and matched these patients to samples taken from 102 men of the same age over the same time period.
But how can blood show your aging? By examining the question on a subcellular level.
Researchers used the lens of epigenetics, which is the study of how your environment and behaviours change how your genes work — for instance, whether your body will follow the genetic instructions to create a specific protein, or whether epigenetic changes will have turned that gene “off”.
Some epigenetic changes are reversible, and some are progressive, such as how aging affects our gene expression.
By looking at how HIV affects DNA methylation, a type of epigenetic change which turns genes off and prevents them from reading the instructions to create certain proteins, researchers measured different indicators of aging within the samples.
Four of these are known as “epigenetic clocks”, and involve comparing different levels of methylation, lymophocytes, or other indicators to an established norm.
The last of the five aging indicators was to look at the length of telomeres, which are the ends of chromosomes that become shorter with each time that cells divide, until they become so short that cell division is no longer possible — one of the many clear measures of how aged a body is, as our bodies are steadily aging from the moment that we have more dying cells than replicating cells within us.
What researchers found was that in the patients with HIV, there was significant age acceleration across all five the aging measurements just before infection and ending two to three years after.
“This clearly demonstrates an early and substantial impact of HIV infection on the epigenetic aging process that begins in the first months and years of living with HIV,” the study stated.
“Becoming infected and living with HIV for only three years or less is already associated with approximately 20 per cent increased risk for a shortened lifespan."
There was no accelerated aging seen in the non-infected control group in that time period.
The associations persisted even after researchers controlled for other factors in the men’s lives that could be contributing to accelerated aging.
“Our access to rare, well-characterized samples allowed us to design this study in a way that leaves little doubt about the role of HIV in eliciting biological signatures of early aging,” Beth Jamieson, a professor in the division of hematology and oncology at the Geffen School and senior author, said in the release. “Our long-term goal is to determine whether we can use any of these signatures to predict whether an individual is at increased risk for specific aging-related disease outcomes, thus exposing new targets for intervention therapeutics.”
The researchers noted that the study was limited by its small sample size, as well as it consisting exclusively of men and primarily of white men, meaning that broader studies need to be done to be sure if these results are applicable across the board.
Although this is the largest study of its type, it only followed the patients up to three years after infection.
Researchers say more research needs to be done to ascertain if this accelerated aging is sustained throughout the life of a person with HIV, and if it predicts longer term clinical outcomes.
It was a typical Tuesday for Mabel Beharrell, 84, until she got the call that would turn her world upside down. Her teenaged grandson was in trouble and needed her help.
The deaths of four people on a farm near the Saskatchewan village of Neudorf have been confirmed a murder-suicide.
The Canada Revenue Agency announced Thursday it will not require 'bare trust' reporting from Canadians that it introduced for the 2024 tax season, just four days before the April 2 deadline.
The Parole Board of Canada has granted full parole to one of three men convicted in the brutal murders of three McDonald's restaurant workers in Cape Breton more than 30 years ago.
Nearly 20 hours after a man climbed and remained perched on top of the Reconciliation Bridge in downtown Calgary, the situation came to a peaceful resolution.
Ontario released its annual sunshine list Thursday afternoon, noting that the largest year-over-year increases were in hospitals, municipalities, and post-secondary sectors.
Genetic analysis has shed light on a long-standing mystery surrounding the fates of U.S. President George Washington's younger brother Samuel and his kin.
A spokesman for a regional Muslim advocacy group says Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre's stance on the Israel-Hamas war could complicate his party's relationship with Muslim Canadians.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is officially selling a copy of the Bible themed to Lee Greenwood’s famous song, 'God Bless the USA.' But the concept of a Bible covered in the American flag has raised concern among religious circles.
B.C. conservation officers recently seized a nine-foot-long Burmese python from a home in Chilliwack.
A New Brunswicker will go to bed Thursday night much richer than he was Wednesday after collecting on a winning lottery ticket he let sit on his bedroom dresser for nearly a year.
The Ontario government is introducing changes to auto-insurance, but some experts say the move is ill-advised.
A Toronto restaurant introduced a surprising new rule that reduced the cost of a meal and raised the salaries of staff.
Newfoundland’s unique version of the Pine Marten has grown out of its threatened designation.
A Toronto man is out $12,000 after falling victim to a deepfake cryptocurrency scam that appeared to involve Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
It started small with a little pop tab collection to simply raise some money for charity and help someone — but it didn’t take long for word to get out that 10-year-old Jace Weber from Mildmay, Ont. was quickly building up a large supply of aluminum pop tabs.
There’s a group of people in Saskatoon that proudly call themselves dumpster divers, and they’re turning the city’s trash into treasure.
Ontario is facing a larger than anticipated deficit but the Doug Ford government still plans to balance its books before the next provincial election.