Predicting Future Health: Organ Age Biomarkers Foretell Disease Risk Decades Early, Study Reveals - Video

Our organs age at different rates, and a blood test determining how much they've each aged could predict the risk of conditions like lung cancer and heart disease decades later, finds a new study led by University College London (UCL) researchers.

The findings, published in The Lancet Digital Health, show how accelerated ageing in specific organs can predict not only diseases affecting that organ, but diseases across the rest of the body as well.

Lead author Professor Mika Kivimaki (UCL Faculty of Brain Sciences) said: “Our organs function as an integrated system, but they can age at different rates. Ageing in particular organs can contribute to numerous ageing-related diseases, so it’s important for us to take care of all aspects of our health.

“We found that a quick and easy blood test can identify whether a specific organ is ageing faster than expected. In years to come, blood tests like this could play a crucial role in preventing numerous diseases.

The researchers analysed blood samples collected from over 6,200 middle-aged adults to determine the biological age of nine organs (heart, blood vessels, liver, immune system, pancreas, kidneys, lungs, intestines, and the brain) and for the entire body. They measured the gap between a person’s chronological (actual) age, and the assessed biological age of each of their organs as determined by markers of ageing specific to that organ, finding that organs often aged at different rates in the same person.

Follow-up data revealed that accelerated organ ageing predicted the risk of 30 different diseases over the next 20 years in initially healthy people.

The researchers found that kidney health was particularly linked to other organs, as people with accelerated kidney ageing were more likely to later develop vascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and liver diseases, while biological ageing of nearly all organs predicted increased risk of kidney disease.

The researchers say that as our organs function in close coordination, accelerated ageing in one organ can impair the function of others, which may explain why people with a rapidly ageing organ were particularly prone to experiencing multiple age-related diseases across different organs.

Ref: Mika Kivimäki, Philipp Frank et al. Proteomic organ-specific ageing signatures and 20-year risk of age-related diseases: the Whitehall II observational cohort study, The Lancet Digital Health,Volume 7, Issue 3,2025,Pages e195-e204, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landig.2025.01.006.