Researchers at Stanford University measured nearly 5,000 proteins in blood plasma from 5,676 adults across five study groups, using the protein patterns to estimate a separate biological age for eleven major organs in each person.
In one cohort of 812 people, each 4.1 years of extra heart age carried close to 2.5 times the risk of heart failure over the next 15 years. Roughly one in five people showed strongly accelerated aging in at least one organ, while only about 1.7 percent showed accelerated aging across multiple organs at once.
Organ age tracked specific diseases: an older kidney lined up with hypertension and diabetes, and an older heart lined up with atrial fibrillation and prior heart attacks. A brain-age score predicted Alzheimer's progression about as strongly as the leading blood biomarker used for that disease. The proteins were measured only once or a few times per person, so turning the scores into a routine clinical test is still in progress.
Read the original study
Oh et al., Nature, 2023 · doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06802-1
One heart, one kidney, aging on separate clocks.
Source
- Oh, H. S.-H., Rutledge, J., Nachun, D., Pálovics, R., Abiose, O., Moran-Losada, P., Channappa, D., Urey, D. Y., Kim, K., Sung, Y. J., Wang, L., Timsina, J., Western, D., Liu, M., Kohlfeld, P., Budde, J., Wilson, E. N., Guen, Y., Maurer, T. M., . . . Wyss-Coray, T. (2023). Organ aging signatures in the plasma proteome track health and disease. Nature, 624(7990), 164–172. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06802-1