Kathleen Wood's parents both died relatively young, before age 62, so the 66-year-old business owner from St. Petersburg, Fla., is very proactive about her health. Last year she decided to explore longevity medicine programs, but she did not feel comfortable receiving care outside a major medical system. When she learned that Northwestern Medicine had opened a longevity clinic, she signed up. "I knew I wanted my care to be backed up with medical research and medical science," she said.
There are hundreds of boutique longevity medicine clinics in the United States, offering services aimed at extending life span and health span. Until recently, these programs, which can cost thousands to tens of thousands of dollars a year, sat outside mainstream medicine, and many offer screenings and interventions not yet proven effective. Fountain Life, a membership-based company with five clinics, charges $23,500 annually at its top tier for services including whole genome sequencing, whole body M.R.I. and stem cell therapies. Its chief medical officer, Dr. Dawn Mussallem, said some of its therapies "have early, promising data."
For consumers like Ms. Wood, programs within nonprofit academic medical centers feel safer, since they carry an expectation of accountability and evidence-based treatment. In the last year, several major health systems have opened their own longevity clinics, a shift that could add legitimacy to a field often regarded with skepticism. Northwestern's clinic costs $5,500 a year and combines well-established tests, such as V02 max testing, with less-validated assessments like biological age tests and retinal analysis.
Mount Sinai's Healthspan program in New York City is expected to open this month. The one-year program offers evidence-informed screenings, a term used for newer science that "is still developing." Experts caution that whole body M.R.I.s can reveal benign conditions that lead to anxiety or unnecessary treatment, and Dr. Kelly Cassano of Mount Sinai said the findings must be monitored responsibly.
Source: New York Times Business · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing