Biological age of organs calculated with a blood test

After a selfie that revealed a person's biological age with the help of artificial intelligence, a blood test now allows us to analyze the signature left by proteins and thus trace the biological age of 11 organs , including the brain, heart , and liver , and from there predict the risk of disease in the next 10 years. This is the result of a study by the US Stanford Medicine research group, published in the journal Nature Medicine, which provides new ways to understand the effectiveness of therapies aimed at slowing aging and opens the possibility of intervening before diseases appear.

Researchers led by Tony Wyss-Coray randomly selected nearly 45,000 people aged between 40 and 70 , whose data are stored in the vast UK Biobank , and monitored them for 17 years. They then analyzed approximately 3,000 proteins in each person's blood, some of which can be traced back to individual organs. Finally, the data was processed by an algorithm that evaluated each individual's protein signature and calculated the biological age of their organs.

A third of the participants had at least one organ whose age differed significantly from their chronological age , and older organs were strongly associated with the risk of developing related disorders .

The brain , in particular, has been shown to be the guardian of longevity : people with a biologically old brain are 12 times more likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's within 10 years than a person of the same age with a younger brain. Brain age is also the best predictor of overall mortality risk: having a very old brain increases the risk of death by 182% over the next 15 years, while a young brain reduces it by 40%.