Longevity medicine, long the turf of boutique clinics selling pricey and often unproven screenings, is getting an academic makeover. As The New York Times’ Eilene Zimmerman reports, several major health systems have opened their own longevity clinics in the past year, a shift that could lend credibility to a field often regarded with skepticism.
The draw is accountability. Kathleen Wood, 66, whose parents both died before 62, chose Northwestern Medicine’s Human Longevity Clinic because she wanted care backed by medical research.
Northwestern’s $5,500-a-year program pairs well-established measures like VO2 max testing with less-validated ones such as biological age tests. But it won’t offer whole-body MRIs or genome sequencing. “We know for those with financial means who want this testing we’re losing that share of the market, but we have a pretty strong line in the sand about it,” said Dr. Baljash S. Cheema, a cardiologist and the clinic’s medical director.
Other centers draw that line elsewhere. Mount Sinai’s new Healthspan program in New York includes genetic testing and full-body MRIs after a risk discussion, despite concerns that the scans flag benign findings that can trigger anxiety or unnecessary treatment. Weill Cornell offers the scans as optional add-ons to programs costing $7,500 to $12,000, though its focus is cardiorespiratory fitness.
Related on the SLP
Insurance rarely covers any of this, and skeptics see business motives at work. “Some of this is a response to market forces,” said Leigh Turner, a professor and director of the Center for Health Ethics at the University of California, Irvine, who argues that many of the thinner-evidence tests belong “in the clinical trial space.”
That’s roughly how Cedars-Sinai’s Healthspan Clinic in Los Angeles operates: insurance covers core evaluations, and patients access other assessments through research trials. “We don’t want that to be available only to the wealthy,” said Dr. Sara E. Espinoza, a geriatric internist and the clinic’s medical director.
