A first of its kind randomized controlled trial led by a team of researchers in the Butler Columbia Aging Center at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, in collaboration with Dr. Michael Kobor’s lab, has shown that calorie restriction can slow the pace of aging in adults. The study was published in Nature Aging.
UBC Authors: Michael S. Kobor
Summary: In worms, flies, and mice, calorie restriction can slow biological processes of aging and extend healthy lifespan. A new study led by Daniel Belsky, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School and a scientist with Columbia’s Butler Aging Center, aimed to test if calorie restriction could slows biological aging in humans. The trial, funded by the US National Institute on Aging, is the first ever investigation of the effects of long-term calorie restriction in healthy, non-obese humans. The trial randomized 220 healthy men and women at three sites in the U.S. to a 25% calorie-restriction or normal diet for two years. To measure biological aging in the participants, Dr. Kobor’s team analyzed methylation marks on DNA extracted from white blood cells taken from the participants. DNA methylation marks are chemical tags on the DNA sequence that regulate the expression of genes and are known to change with aging. Its results evidenced that caloric restriction slowed the pace of aging in humans, which gives researchers a sense of the the effects they might observe in different interventions, such as intermittent fasting or time-restricted eating.
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