Innovative Tests That Reveal How Fast We Are Aging
About the “Longevity Science” section
Longevity clinics are opening at a dizzying pace, billionaires are investing vast sums in new treatments, but what does science really know about longevity and quality of life? A weekly section will examine this industry in all its aspects, from the research to the money driving it. We are all getting older, but most of us feel younger than the age listed on our identity cards. How can we know whether the efforts we make to stay young are actually working? In recent years, many tools have been developed to measure the body’s condition relative to biological age. Here are some of the newest and most intriguing among them.
1. A blood test reveals the age of each organ
Research from recent years shows that different organs age at different rates. Gradually, dedicated “biological clocks” are being developed for different organs. In a study published in 2025 in the journal Nature Aging, the biological age of ten different organs, the brain, heart, blood vessels, kidneys and others, was examined using a single blood test. The active proteins in each organ were extracted from the blood, and they can tell researchers the chronological age of each of the organs.
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The result, a combined weighting of the biological age of all the organs together, predicted morbidity, disease progression and mortality better than information about the patient’s clinical condition together with genetic information. The test was done using a method called Olink Explore 3072, which examines more than 3,000 different proteins, but similar results were found even if only about 20 proteins were measured, meaning a cheaper and more accessible test. The study found that aging in certain organs is associated with diseases in those same organs. Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis were more common among those who showed muscle aging, and Alzheimer’s among those who showed brain aging, although it is not clear what the cause and what the effect are. Brain diseases were almost entirely dependent on brain aging, whereas diabetes and kidney disease were associated with aging in several organs. There was also significance to examining the organs as an integrated whole. The more organs that were “old,” the higher the risk of mortality, but brain aging made the largest contribution.
2. How do we know whether what we did helped?
Like our chronological age, biological age is also a number measured at a single point in time. But the DunedinPACE test, which has become popular in recent years, can calculate the pace of aging and help understand whether interventions we made after being alarmed by earlier tests actually led to an improvement in our aging rate. It is a blood test that maps our epigenetics.
We all have genetics, the body’s basic blueprint. However, over the years, especially during pregnancy and early childhood, but also later on, our interaction with the environment determines which of our genes will be expressed more and which less. That is epigenetics, and it is reflected in every cell through a series of “tags” on different genes. Different cells can have different epigenetic tags. In fact, this is one of the things that distinguishes cells from one another. The DunedinPACE test examines epigenetics related to the aging process. In 2022, an article published in the journal eLife validated the test for the first time, and since then several papers have been published in which the test is used to identify factors affecting the pace of aging and to check whether different interventions do in fact affect it. Among other things, it was found that social ties slow the pace of aging, and one of the things that increases it is worry about the fact that you are aging.
3. Predicting morbidity and mortality from an MRI scan
Anti-aging clinics, which have become popular around the world, offer MRI scans to assess the body’s age. Is it possible to understand aging processes just by looking at the different organs? Recent studies say yes. Among them is a study published just last April in the journal NPJ Aging, in which researchers trained an artificial intelligence model on scans of organs susceptible to aging effects, such as the brain, heart, kidneys, liver, pancreas and spleen. The researchers did not tell the model what to look for, but gave it scans alongside actual clinical outcomes from tens of thousands of participants in the UK Biobank database. The researchers found that it is possible to derive from the scan a “biological age” that predicts morbidity and mortality even beyond chronological age. The scan can also provide aging scores for specific organs, which predict diseases such as Alzheimer’s, heart disease and kidney disease.
4. The twin that will predict how we age
The digital twin concept was born in the aviation industry, if we build a model of an aircraft and simulate with it the stress conditions the real plane undergoes, we can see what might go wrong. What if each person had a digital twin through which we could simulate what our aging looks like and what might happen to the body? Or use it to demonstrate how certain treatments or lifestyle changes would affect us? Several major companies have expressed interest in developing such a product, including the French aerospace company Dassault, Nvidia, Siemens and Philips.
For now, we do not know enough about human biology to predict exactly what will happen to a specific person. But in recent years, technology has been developing that makes it possible to grow “organoids” in the lab from a few cells from the body. The combination of the biological twin in a Petri dish that simulates one tissue together with a virtual twin in a computer that simulates several tissues may one day allow us to see our aging before it happens.
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