For years, young people have used smoking as a way to look older. As it turns out – thanks to a first-of-its-kind study out of the University of Lethbridge using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze blood biochemistry – it’s true, smoking truly does make you older.
“We demonstrate for the first time that smoking status can be predicted using blood biochemistry and cell count results and the recent advances in AI and machine learning,” says Dr. Olga Kovalchuk, a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, Board of Governors Chair in Epigenetics of Health and Disease, and Canadian Institute of Health Research Chair in Gender and Health. “By employing age-prediction models developed using supervised deep learning techniques, we found that smokers exhibited higher aging rates than non-smokers. In other words, we show that smoking makes people biologically older.”
This realization almost sounds like common sense but until now, through the use of AI, it has never been quantified and illuminated to this extent.
“We all have a chronological age but then there is also our biological age, which is an indicator of general fitness,” says Kovalchuk. “If somebody is 35 but on a biological clock, through specific markers, it shows them at a biological age of 50, obviously they are doing something wrong. Smoking, specifically in younger people, those in their 20s, 30s and 40s, is truly harmful as it makes them biologically older.”
Continue reading at University of Lethbridge.
Image via University of Lethbridge.