Most of us would like to hang around on the planet for as long as possible, and thankfully, lifespans in many countries are increasing. Scientists are also developing a new field known as longevity medicine, which aims to help people stay healthier for longer as they age.
But according to an international group of researchers, interventions should happen much earlier, perhaps even before birth. In a correspondence published in the journal Nature Health, they propose a new global consortium called PROSPER (Pregestational and Pediatric Research for Optimal Healthspan and Early-life Resilience). Instead of treating aging in middle age, their idea is to better understand, measure and eventually help improve the way our bodies age.
The scientists argue that our future health isn’t a blank slate at birth. External factors such as maternal and paternal health, nutrition, sleep and early-life experiences leave lasting impressions on our biology. Instead of looking at early life as just a time of growth, the authors see it as a critical window to build up the body’s baseline resilience, helping us stay healthier later in life.
So what exactly are they suggesting?
Their proposal is not about any specific treatments or interventions. Rather, it’s about building the scientific and research infrastructure needed for future discoveries.
First, they want a way to gather and combine existing health data from different countries so researchers can look at long-term trends. They also suggest creating shared biobanks that would store biological samples to help find specific health markers tailored to growing bodies.
Once that foundation is built, the goal is to run international studies to test whether improving everyday variables such as childhood nutrition, sleep, the microbiome and metabolic health can alter long-term health trajectories and biological aging.
Health care shakeup
But to do this, health care needs to change, the scientists say. Currently, it is split into separate areas such as maternity care, pediatrics and adult medicine that rarely talk to each other. What’s more, current tools for measuring biological aging were designed for adults and are not applicable to the rapidly changing biology of a growing child.
“The absence of structured frameworks to monitor and modulate early-life determinants of aging therefore represents a substantial gap in traditional medicine,” the researchers commented in their paper.
To fix this, they propose a lifetime roadmap that joins these areas together, embedding proactive checks right into routine doctor visits.
Ultimately, these checks would focus on different aspects of health at every stage of development. For example, they would encourage healthier parental lifestyles for up to a full year before pregnancy, monitor infant sleep and nutrition, and track fitness and mental health through adolescence.