Abstract
Despite the continuous increase in life expectancy in our societies, the diversity in health span is enormous (http://ec.europa.eu/health/indicators). Such heterogeneity can be observed at the level of metabolites and immune factors in blood and also in the genome, its regulation by epigenetic mechanisms and its expression. We investigate to what extend the heterogeneity in the rate and nature of physiological decline among elderly is driven by parameters of metabolic health that can be detected in the circulation, muscle and fat tissue. How can we include epigenetic, metabolomics and other omics data in studies of ageing and mortality and what do these marker sets add to more traditional markers of metabolism. The heterogeneity among elderly can be investigated in longitudinal and in intervention studies. Therefor we apply functional, metabolomic, epigenetic and gene expression measures in challenge tests, clinical and intervention studies. Metabolomics studies indicate which parameters associate to disease and lifespan in prospective studies on the one hand and metabolic improvement after interventions on the other. We also investigate how such biomarkers in the circulation relate to aspects of metabolic health measured in muscle tissue of the same individuals depending on the environment.