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Biological Age Test: What Is Your Biological Age?

Biological age refers to the level of efficiency at which your body functions according to the number of years you have lived.1 Multiple indicators, such as DNA methylation levels,2 telomere length,3 and general cellular health, are utilized to assess your aging progression in relation to others.

Figuring out your biological age tells you how your body works based on your age. This difference is important because it helps us understand why people the same age may age and get sick at different rates. In biological age tests, DNA methylation patterns and telomere length are used to get a better idea of how healthy someone is and how old they are.4 Knowing your biological age could inspire you to make changes to your lifestyle that will slow down the aging process, improve your health, and add years to your life. This information improves personalized medical care and drives research into anti-aging therapies.

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What is Biological Age?

Knowing the difference between biological age and chronological age can help us understand health and aging.5 Biological age is based on the health of your cells and body systems, whereas chronological age is based on when you were born. This relies on your genes, how you live, and where you live. This range of age types helps explain why two people of the same age can have very different health patterns and aging situations.

Biological age tests look at signs that show how healthy and well cells and molecules are working. Biomarkers include the length of telomeres, changes in epigenetics, inflammation, and how well internal systems work. The goal of these tests is to get a better idea of how well a person’s body is working compared to others their age. A lower biological age than a formal age means that the aging process is going better. If your biological age is higher, you are likely to age faster, which could mean that your health is worse or that you are more likely to get age-related diseases.

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For many reasons, it’s important to understand biological age. People can make changes to their health and habits to slow down aging if they know the specific factors that do this. If your biological age is much higher than your official age, changing how you eat, exercise, deal with stress, and sleep can help lower it. Biological age tests can also push people to live healthier lives and take better care of their health.

Researchers in medicine can also use biological age to help them learn more. If doctors and experts knew more about how people age, they could tailor medical care to each person and come up with more targeted treatments to slow down the aging process. As research in this area moves forward, biological age may be used a lot to test anti-aging medicines and treatments.

How Is Biological Age Calculated?

Scientific progress has led to better ways to measure biological age, such as the Horvath clock test and the epigenetic clock.6 These methods look at biological signs that show cell age and health to compare a person’s aging process to their real age.

DNA methylation is a key change that adds methyl groups to DNA molecules. Epigenetic clocks keep track of this change. Our DNA methylation patterns change as we age because of our genes and the choices we make about how we live. An amazing method called the epigenetic clock measures biological age by looking at the methylation state of DNA regions, which changes in a way that can be predicted with age. Scientists have made a lot of different epigenetic clocks that use different DNA methylation sites to keep track of how old someone is. A lot of research has been done on this method for looking at results related to getting older, making it a good base for evaluating biological aging.

A leading epigenetic clock expert created the Horvath clock, which functions precisely and in a variety of cells and organs. The Horvath clock is an interesting test that looks at 353 DNA methylation spots that Dr. Horvath discovered can correctly tell how old someone is.7 This method can figure out the biological age of any kind of tissue or cell, no matter how old the sample is in years. Different species can use the Horvath clock, which demonstrates how crucial it is to understand how living things age and function.

For these tests, DNA samples need to be taken from blood, saliva, or skin swabs. After DNA is collected, it is carefully looked at for methylation patterns. Cutting-edge computer methods are used to compare these trends to population study baselines and figure out a person’s biological age.

These tools help us understand how people age and make medicines that work best for each person. Doctors can better and earlier identify people who are at risk for age-related diseases with the help of cutting edge tools like epigenetic and Horvath clocks. This ability lets treatments be precisely tailored to each person’s aging trends. This could help people stay healthy and improve their quality of life as they get older.

TruAge Lab Test

The TruAge biological age lab test is one of the most advanced ways to find out someone’s biological age, which may be different from their actual age. The TruAge test looks at cellular and molecular factors to get a better picture of how the body ages. This is especially helpful for people who want to learn more about their health, make their fitness habits better, and maybe even live longer by focusing on certain things.

Epigenetic factors, especially DNA methylation, are measured by the TruAge test. These trends include changes in DNA chemicals that turn genes on or off and are influenced by genes, culture, and genetics. The test can tell us important things about cellular aging and the factors that might be affecting our aging rate after looking at these markers.

To conduct the TruAge test, a small amount of blood or spit needs to be sent to a lab. Newest technology and methods are used in the lab to look at DNA methylation data. The report gives an in-depth look at the person’s biological age, current health, and living advice. This information is very important for making smart choices about eating, exercise, and other health issues that will help you live longer and be healthier.

Advancements in Biological Age Testing

Recent improvements in biological age testing have sped up studies and technology, making tests more accurate and easier to get. These tests give us more information about how we age. These improvements make it much easier to figure out a person’s biological age. These evaluations are more accurate because they use new sensors, more advanced computing methods, and a wider range of biological materials.

The ways that epigenetic testing is done have been greatly improved and made more widespread. The PhenoAge and GrimAge clocks are new types of epigenetic clocks.(8;9) Using biological age and clinical data, these updated versions guess how long people will live and how healthy they will be. These models use DNA methylation patterns, clinical signs like blood protein levels, and lifestyle variables to figure out how healthy someone is and how likely they are to get an age-related disease.

Bioinformatics and sequencing have made biological age tests better. Researchers can do more studies and go deeper into epigenetic analysis because high-throughput sequencing technology is cheap and easy to get. Biomarker sets for age are also being looked at with machine learning methods. These programs can find patterns and correctly guess a person’s biological age. They get better at making predictions as they get more information.

Multi-omics methods for figuring out a person’s biological age are another big step forward.10 Putting together genes, transcriptomics,11 proteomics,12 and metabolomics data helps researchers understand the complicated process of cellular aging.13 This multidisciplinary method might help find new biomarkers and processes connected to aging, which would then allow therapies to slow or stop the decline that comes with getting older.

Conclusion

With more advanced tests, you can find out more about your health and biological age than just your physical age. Modern tools, such as the epigenetic clock and a number of variables, are used in these tests to find out how genes, habits, and the environment affect aging. As technology improves quickly and more research is done, biological age testing is becoming more and more important. It helps people make their own health plans that work better for them, and it helps doctors and nurses give more effective and personalized care. Take charge of your health and age to extend your life and improve your quality of life.

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References

[1] Jackson SH, Weale MR, Weale RA. Biological age--what is it and can it be measured? Arch Gerontol Geriatr. 2003 Mar-Apr;36(2):103-15. doi: 10.1016/s0167-4943(02)00060-2. PMID: 12849085.

[2] Singer BD. A Practical Guide to the Measurement and Analysis of DNA Methylation. Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol. 2019 Oct;61(4):417-428. doi: 10.1165/rcmb.2019-0150TR. PMID: 31264905; PMCID: PMC6775954.

[3] Vaiserman A, Krasnienkov D. Telomere Length as a Marker of Biological Age: State-of-the-Art, Open Issues, and Future Perspectives. Front Genet. 2021 Jan 21;11:630186. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2020.630186. PMID: 33552142; PMCID: PMC7859450.

[4] Klemp I, Hoffmann A, Müller L, Hagemann T, Horn K, Rohde-Zimmermann K, Tönjes A, Thiery J, Löffler M, Burkhardt R, Böttcher Y, Stumvoll M, Blüher M, Krohn K, Scholz M, Baber R, Franks PW, Kovacs P, Keller M. DNA methylation patterns reflect individual's lifestyle independent of obesity. Clin Transl Med. 2022 Jun;12(6):e851. doi: 10.1002/ctm2.851. PMID: 35692099; PMCID: PMC9189420.

[5] Maltoni R, Ravaioli S, Bronte G, Mazza M, Cerchione C, Massa I, Balzi W, Cortesi M, Zanoni M, Bravaccini S. Chronological age or biological age: What drives the choice of adjuvant treatment in elderly breast cancer patients? Transl Oncol. 2022 Jan;15(1):101300. doi: 10.1016/j.tranon.2021.101300. Epub 2021 Dec 1. PMID: 34864401; PMCID: PMC8640726.

[6] Duan R, Fu Q, Sun Y, Li Q. Epigenetic clock: A promising biomarker and practical tool in aging. Ageing Res Rev. 2022 Nov;81:101743. doi: 10.1016/j.arr.2022.101743. Epub 2022 Oct 4. PMID: 36206857.

[7] Horvath S. DNA methylation age of human tissues and cell types. Genome Biol. 2013;14(10):R115. doi: 10.1186/gb-2013-14-10-r115. Erratum in: Genome Biol. 2015;16:96. PMID: 24138928; PMCID: PMC4015143.

[8] Levine ME, Lu AT, Quach A, Chen BH, Assimes TL, Bandinelli S, Hou L, Baccarelli AA, Stewart JD, Li Y, Whitsel EA, Wilson JG, Reiner AP, Aviv A, Lohman K, Liu Y, Ferrucci L, Horvath S. An epigenetic biomarker of aging for lifespan and healthspan. Aging (Albany NY). 2018 Apr 18;10(4):573-591. doi: 10.18632/aging.101414. PMID: 29676998; PMCID: PMC5940111.

[9] Lu AT, Binder AM, Zhang J, Yan Q, Reiner AP, Cox SR, Corley J, Harris SE, Kuo PL, Moore AZ, Bandinelli S, Stewart JD, Wang C, Hamlat EJ, Epel ES, Schwartz JD, Whitsel EA, Correa A, Ferrucci L, Marioni RE, Horvath S. DNA methylation GrimAge version 2. Aging (Albany NY). 2022 Dec 14;14(23):9484-9549. doi: 10.18632/aging.204434. Epub 2022 Dec 14. PMID: 36516495; PMCID: PMC9792204.

[10] Chen C, Wang J, Pan D, Wang X, Xu Y, Yan J, Wang L, Yang X, Yang M, Liu GP. Applications of multi-omics analysis in human diseases. MedComm (2020). 2023 Jul 31;4(4):e315. doi: 10.1002/mco2.315. PMID: 37533767; PMCID: PMC10390758.

[11] Lowe R, Shirley N, Bleackley M, Dolan S, Shafee T. Transcriptomics technologies. PLoS Comput Biol. 2017 May 18;13(5):e1005457. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1005457. PMID: 28545146; PMCID: PMC5436640.

[12] Al-Amrani S, Al-Jabri Z, Al-Zaabi A, Alshekaili J, Al-Khabori M. Proteomics: Concepts and applications in human medicine. World J Biol Chem. 2021 Sep 27;12(5):57-69. doi: 10.4331/wjbc.v12.i5.57. PMID: 34630910; PMCID: PMC8473418.

[13] Scoggin CH. The cellular basis of aging. West J Med. 1981 Dec;135(6):521-5. PMID: 7336718; PMCID: PMC1273329.



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