Omega-3 supplements have been shown to reduce the risk of falls and frailty in older people.Credit: Brian Jackson/Alamy
Clinician-scientist Heike Bischoff-Ferrari and geroscientist Steve Horvath take omega-3 and vitamin D supplements every day to prevent ageing-related health issues. “I do this every morning with my coffee,” says Horvath, who is based at biotechnology company Altos Labs in Cambridge, UK. “I practise what we publish.”
In Nature Aging today, the pair are co-authors on a study that showed that these supplements over a three-year period slowed biological ageing by three to four months, particularly when combined with exercise. Biological ageing is measured at a molecular level; people of the same chronological age can have faster or slower age-related decline depending on their health.
Three to four months’ slowing of biological ageing sounds small, but this can translate to important public-health benefits such as a reduction in the prevalence of some age-related health conditions, says Bischoff-Ferrari, based at the University of Basel in Switzerland.
The study analysed data from the DO-HEALTH trial on the effects of supplements and exercise in older people, that took place across five European countries from 2012 to 2014. The researchers reviewed data on more than 700 people aged 70 or over who were given either a placebo or omega-3, vitamin D and exercise alone or in combination. All the participants were from Switzerland and around half were healthy, with no major chronic illnesses or disabilities.
Blood samples taken from participants at the start and end of the study were analysed using four biological clocks. These measure the extent of biological ageing on the basis of additions and deletions of methyl groups to the DNA.
“The use of multiple DNA methylation clocks is a strength, as different clocks capture distinct aspects of biological ageing,” says Luigi Fontana, a biogerontologist at the University of Sydney in Australia.
Stronger together
One of those clocks, called PhenoAge, showed that older people avoided several months of biological ageing over 3 years by taking 1 gram of polyunsaturated omega-3 fatty acids, derived from algae, with additive benefits from taking vitamin D (2,000 international units per day) and engaging in 30 minutes of exercise 3 times a week. Together, the 3 treatments reduced biological ageing by 2.9–3.8 months.
On its own, omega-3 slowed biological ageing in three of the epigenetic clocks the researchers used.
