A sex-adjusted 7-biomarker clinical aging clock for translational preventative medicine

Biological aging clocks capture heterogeneous rates of aging in individuals and transform current medical practice toward translational preventive medicine. Here, we developed a clinical aging clock based on routine blood biochemistry markers from 59,741 healthy samples in a Southeast Asian cohort. We established a novel correction method to address the systematic skew in predictions from first-generation clocks. This correction improved the accuracy of age-acceleration predictions for disease risks and enhanced interpretability for disease-driven and organ-specific aging processes without relying on mortality data. Based on only seven biomarkers, our clock accurately predicts both self-reported and physician-annotated ICD health data, indicating an increased hazard ratio. Importantly, the clock is robust even in the presence of acute infections or transient immune activation. To demonstrate the multi-ethnic generalizability of our biological age clock, we validated our approach using data from both the NHANES and UK Biobank cohorts. Our approach demonstrates the feasibility of a simple, robust, and interpretable clinical aging clock with potential for real-world implementation in personalized health monitoring and preventive care.