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How accurate are biological age tests?
Biological Age Tests — Available for You! Enter your results online from a basic blood test. Provides accuracy within 5.5 to 5.9 years depending on the amount of data entered. Age should be estimated through physical examination; life history, matching local or national events with personal milestones; and existing nonformal documents. Accuracy of age estimation should be subject to three tests: biological plausibility, historical plausibility, and corroboration from reputable sources. That may seem surprising. But in a recent study in Nature Medicine, an NIH-funded research team was able to gauge a person’s age quite reliably by analyzing a blood sample for levels of a few hundred proteins. The results offer important new insights into what happens as we age. Determining your biological age requires medical tests for telomere length and biomarkers of DNA methylation, which is the process by which DNA is changed throughout your lifetime. Unlike chronological age, your biological age can be changed. “About 68% of people will have a biological age within five years of their chronological age, but you can also find individuals who are a decade or more older or younger,” she explains. Body age is a measurement of how old you are biologically based upon your health and fitness level as opposed to what your birth certificate indicates. For example, someone who is thirty-five years old may have a body age that is ten years older.
Are biological age tests accurate?
Their accuracy level is unclear. They are trying to benchmark against telomere lengths of a variety of cells. Their results have large variations (up to 38 years in one of their examples) against chronological age. They do not have mortality studies. Quantifying these changes has allowed scientists to develop models that calculate a person’s biological age, a measure of the “well-being” of their cells. The Horvath clock is one of the most widely-used age clocks and uses DNA methylation data to calculate age (Horvath S, Genome Biology, 2013). Age should be estimated through physical examination; life history, matching local or national events with personal milestones; and existing nonformal documents. Accuracy of age estimation should be subject to three tests: biological plausibility, historical plausibility, and corroboration from reputable sources. That may seem surprising. But in a recent study in Nature Medicine, an NIH-funded research team was able to gauge a person’s age quite reliably by analyzing a blood sample for levels of a few hundred proteins. The results offer important new insights into what happens as we age.
Is there a test to determine human age?
While it’s possible to test athletes for drugs, there’s actually no scientific test to determine someone’s exact age. This might seem like a weird statement, at first. After all, we can tell how old trees are by measuring their rings. But there’s no comparable test for humans. Can you tell someone’s age by a DNA test? The short answer is no. However, it is fun to think about how this might be done in the future. As we get older, we actually lose DNA. Why is my biological age higher than my actual age? Once you get your results back from a biological age test and it comes back higher than your chronological age, it may mean there has been some damage to your cells, and your body is ageing prematurely. However, there is no need to panic. Your biological age is certainly older than your chronological age, because it is associated with a higher risk for certain diseases brought on by living such a lifestyle.