Blood-based aging measure linked to disease and death risk
An observational study spanning 18,476 people in China linked an aging measure developed in a healthy group to chronic disease and death risk.
Multicentre
In an observational study, researchers analysed plasma, the liquid part of blood, from 18,476 participants aged 1 to 96 across six centres in China. They identified 56 small molecules associated with age. In a healthy cohort, they built a model to estimate age from blood-molecule profiles. They measured how far estimated age differed from actual age.
Higher estimated ages relative to actual age were associated with poorer health and unfavourable lifestyles. During follow-up from 2019 to 2025, this age acceleration was linked to higher risks of developing fatty liver disease, high blood pressure and diabetes, and death from any cause. In a disease cohort, a second measure captured departures from age-expected death risk. That measure increased with a greater number of diseases and more body systems affected.
Why it matters
The researchers suggested that blood-molecule profiles could offer a scalable way to assess aging-related health risks across the lifespan.
Caveats
The observational design cannot show that accelerated blood-based aging caused disease or death. The abstract did not report the size of the risk increases or the numbers in each cohort.
The paper
Renji Hospital
Science Translational Medicine, 14 Oct 2026
