US researchers have developed a blood test that looks at the health of 200 proteins in a person’s body to determine how fast they are ageing.

Specifically, it can predict the likelihood of you developing 18 age-related diseases, including dementia, heart disease, liver and kidney diseases, and various cancers.

The study of proteins and their interactions in a cell – and their potential accurately assessing human health – is called ‘proteomics’.

What the researchers have developed – using machine learning – is a proteomic biological clock.

The US researchers are already working on developing the test for clinical use, to make it available at your doctor’s office.

Dr Austin Argentieri is a research fellow in the Analytic and Translational Genetics Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital.

He is the lead author of a new study in Nature Medicine.

He told Medical News Today: “We envision that after a baseline test that tells you about your future health trajectory, you can work with your physician to make necessary steps to improve your health.

“And then when you take a new proteomic age test, any improvements or decline in your health will be reflected in new results.

“The hope is that you can use it as a continuous monitoring over time to check whether steps you’re taking to improve your health are having an overall positive impact across many different biological systems in your body”.

Biological ageing

Biological age is determined by the extent of damage you’ve accumulated at a cellular and physiological level over time.

Your biological age is determined by your diet, lifestyle (exercise, sleep and levels of stress), genetics and diseases you’ve experienced or continue to be plagued by.

Your chronological age is also a factor.

The study of biological age and applying it to the real work is a fast-moving area.

In April, we reported on a study that used nine biomarkers to show that the widely reported cancer spike in under-50s is driven by accelerated biological ageing.

The new clock

Most biological ageing clocks use DNA methylation, a kind of epigenetic switch, one of the mechanisms controlling expression of genes.

It has long been thought that a clock based on protein levels may provide a more accurate measure of biological health and function.

Once the human genome was mapped to great applause, researchers started looking more closely at the proteome, the entirety of proteins at work in our cells.

After all, proteins are fundamental to life.

As a 2007 paper explained: “Because proteome reflects more accurately on the dynamic state of a cell, tissue or organism, much is expected from proteomics to yield better disease markers for diagnosis and therapy monitoring.”

Dr Argentieri says “protein levels may provide a more direct mechanistic and functional insight into ageing biology. Moreover, the proteome is the most common target for drug development.”

However, previous proteomic age clock studies “have not been validated independently across populations with diverse genetic and geographic backgrounds”.

To address that issue, Argentieri and company developed a machine learning model that uses blood proteomic information to estimate a proteomic age clock in a large sample of participants from the UK Biobank (UKB)”.

This amounted to 45,441 people. aged 40 to 70.

He then validated the model in two other biobanks, one in China, the other in Finland.

These biobanks are “geographically and genetically distinct populations that have distinct age ranges and morbidity profiles from the UKB”.

The researchers identified “204 proteins that accurately predict chronological age”.

They further identified a set of 20 ageing-related proteins.

Argentieri said: “We demonstrated that our proteomic age clock showed similar age prediction accuracy in the independent participants from China and Finland compared with its performance in the UK Biobank.”

The researchers can use this information to then measure “how quickly you are ageing on a biological level by comparing how old your blood proteins predict you are versus your actual chronological age”.