Harvard Team Develops 4,000-Person Gene Test to Predict Biological Age and Time to Death
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Jun 12
Harvard Team Develops 4,000-Person Gene Test to Predict Biological Age and Time to Death
3 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Jun 12
Summary
Vadim Gladyshev and colleagues built a gene-activity clock from data on more than 4,000 people, aiming to estimate both biological aging and a person’s likely “time to death.”
The method links patterns of gene activity to age and disease, drawing also on mouse, rat and macaque data, and researchers say it is more sensitive than earlier molecular clocks such as epigenetic tests.
A more reliable aging measure could shorten long clinical trials for anti-aging treatments and eventually inform policies that now rely mainly on chronological age.
The test remains for research use only, and its mortality output is probabilistic rather than a fixed prediction of when someone will die.