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Whether you’re young or old, you can help researchers slow time


The Gérontopôle de Toulouse is looking for a thousand volunteers for a long-term study on aging. Drawing – Michel Gile – Sipa

  • INSPIRE is a vast study, overseen by the Gérontopôle of the Toulouse University Hospital, which consists in determining the real biological age of people.
  • The aim is to identify the biological markers of aging and to find possible preventive or curative treatments to age in good health.
  • For this, the Gérontopôle Research Center is looking for 1,000 volunteers, from 30 to 100 years old, who will be scrutinized and monitored for ten years.
  • 20 minutes followed Jean-Louis on his first day of volunteering for this race against time.

Brown puffer jacket, red umbrella, determined look of the inveterate walker. On this cloudy morning in Toulouse, Jean-Louis, 79, enters the
Cité de la Santé, under the Dome of La Grave Hospital. He is told “often” that he is not his age. But time catches up with him. “For two years, I may have forgotten names,” he says. And his date is precisely intended to determine his real age. Not that of the civil status but its biological age.

Jean-Louis is one of the precious grains of sand, one among a thousand, which will help researchers from the INSPIRE program, piloted by the
Gérontopôle * of the Toulouse University Hospital, to become masters of clocks. This vast study, which will last ten years, aims to identify the “biological markers” of aging, so as to understand why we are unequal in the face of the ravages of time. And to make everyone benefit from the most “robust” secrets of youth, those about which they said with a touch of jealousy that they do not age.

“Our two major objectives are to work on healthy aging and the maintenance of intrinsic capacities defined by the World Health Organization, in other words memory, mobility, hearing, vision, food and l ‘mood’, details Sophie Guyonnet, the practitioner who is piloting the project at the Gérontopôle research center, under the leadership of Professor Bruno Vellas. With as a luxury stallion, this unprecedented cohort of 1,000 volunteers that Jean-Luc has just integrated in two days, almost on a whim.

A successful “chair vacuum” in 9 seconds

The Toulousain has just passed his first full half-day check-up, which he will have to undergo once a year for ten years. Between a breakfast and a lunch on the spot, he took blood, hair, and measured the elasticity of his skin. The team’s geriatrician Catherine Takeda tested her famous intrinsic abilities in eight minutes. She whispered words to him to determine if it is hard on the sheet and Jean-Louis performed remarkably “empty chair”, getting up and sitting down 5 times in nine seconds. “How much is the record? “, He tried. “You have to worry about 14 seconds,” replied the geriatrician.

Jean-Louis, a 79-year-old volunteer, takes the first tests of the INSPIRE study on aging. – H. Menal – 20 Minutes

This universal test, he will have to reproduce it at home, every four months, and enter his results either in his paper logbook, or, from February, on his smartphone app. And if a decline is identified in one area, Jean-Louis will be taken care of immediately to try to reverse the trend as soon as possible. It’s give and take. It helps the Gérontopôle to complete its “organic collection”, “anonymized” and in return, it benefits from health monitoring with baby onions. “I like the idea of ​​participating in a medical study and it’s also reassuring to be followed from all angles,” he says.

The Gérontopôle gives itself two years to bring together its 1,000 volunteers (see box), from 30 (soon 20) to 100 years. Whether you are at university or in a retirement home, it is up to you to join Jean-Louis in this race against time.

* With Inserm, CNRS and Toulouse 3 University – Paul-Sabatier

volunteers

If you are between 30 and 100 and you want to volunteer or gather additional information on the study, you can reach Lauréane Brigitte at 05 61 77 7004 ([email protected]) or Agathe Milhet at 05 61 77 71 15 ([email protected])

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