In an article revised on December 31, 2020, for Sciencealert, David Nield discusses a million-person study speculating that high iron levels in human blood decrease healthy lifespan.
Put simply, having too much iron in the
blood appeared to be linked to an increased risk of dying earlier.
"We are very excited by these
findings as they strongly suggest that high levels of iron in the blood reduces
our healthy years of life, and keeping these levels in check could prevent
age-related damage," said data analyst Paul Timmers, from the University of
Edinburgh in the UK.
"We speculate that our findings on
iron metabolism might also start to explain why very high levels of iron-rich
red meat in the diet has been linked to age-related conditions such as heart
disease."
While correlation doesn't necessarily
mean causation, the researchers used a statistical technique called Mendelian
randomisation to reduce bias and attempt to infer causation in the
data.
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