On July 7, the Human Longevity Clinic will open to the public for the first time. The clinic draws upon groundbreaking research from the Potocsnak Longevity Institute at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine to provide personalized insights about your aging process and actionable changes to help you age better. 

 “We have tests that are not typically done in a routine clinic, they’re done in research studies,” said Baljash Cheema, MD, medical director of the Human Longevity Clinic. “We’re looking at things like arterial health, pulse wave velocity, and retinal imaging. Things that change before you manifest chronic diseases like high blood pressure, kidney disease, and coronary artery disease. You may be on the way to those things but not know about it, and that’s what we can help catch early.”

 Your visit

Patients will undergo a series of specialized tests to measure key biomarkers of aging.

• Neurocognition tests including cognitive, olfactory, and auditory assessments
• Heart and vascular tests
• Pulmonary function tests
• Musculoskeletal tests including body composition and strength, gait speed, and balance assessments
• Lab work including molecular clocks that can be used to measure your biological age directly
• Retinal imaging

After the initial visit, patients will meet with a longevity physician to discuss the results and recommended lifestyle changes. If any screening test suggests an underlying condition, the physician will recommend a referral to the appropriate Northwestern Medicine specialist. 

Patients will also consult with an exercise physiologist and a registered dietitian. They will gain access to mobile apps to track diet and exercise and communicate with their care team about their progress.

 Select tests will be repeated six months after the initial visit to see if the patient has been able to ‘bend the curve’ of aging. 

 “Through our research, we’ve had people use this as a wake-up call,” said Dr. Cheema, who is also a heart failure and heart transplantation specialist with the Northwestern Medicine Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. “They knew their weight or cholesterol wasn’t perfect. Through these tests and recommended lifestyle changes, we’ve seen people come back feeling better, walking faster, developing more strength and endurance. We’re changing how their priorities stack up in terms of their health.”

 The research

Age is the leading risk factor for disease and disability. Researchers at the Potocsnak Longevity Institute have spent years studying populations that exhibit resistance to age-related decline. This includes a unique genetic variant in a Swiss Amish community in Adams County, Indiana. Douglas Vaughan, MD,director of the Potocsnak Longevity Institute, discovered people with this variant are protected from biological aging. Individuals were found to live 10 percent longer with preserved cardiovascular flexibility, protection from diabetes, and lower fasting insulin levels.

 Dr. Vaughan’s research team is particularly interested in learning how to slow aging in individuals that are disadvantaged due to chronic conditions or circumstances. This includes patients with chronic disease like Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), which is a known accelerator of aging. By studying patients living with HIV, researchers hope to learn how factors can impact accelerating age in the general population and how to slow the process down.

 “For the first time in human history, we have the opportunity to shift the medical paradigm from reactive treatment of disease to proactive extension of healthspan. We are constantly refining our methods for measuring biological age in humans while we enroll and study people from all walks of life in Chicago. Beyond what we are doing here, we are moving quickly to install similar laboratories around the globe. We want to set up labs that are identical in terms of equipment, procedures, and protocols, and together, a network like this has the potential to identify interventions that can slow the trajectory of aging. These interventions may include drugs, lifestyle and dietary modifications, and supplements. We are dedicated to finding ways to slow aging that are safe, effective, scalable, evidence-based, and affordable,” said Dr. Vaughan, who is also a cardiologist with the Bluhm Cardiovascular Institute. 

Through clinical trials at the Human Longevity Lab, researchers are studying interventions that may alter the aging trajectory and improve human lifespan. Dr. Cheema serves as the lab’s director of Artificial Intelligence, where his team is developing AI-based tools to identify the markers of healthy aging.  

 To schedule an appointment at the Human Longevity Clinic, call 312.926.0878 or email humanlongevity@nm.org. For more information on healthy aging, visit longevity.nm.org.