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Researchers link the health of nine organs to diseases in old age
2025-05-22 14:42:34 / JETË
How old are your organs? The answer may not match your chronological age, and a new analysis shows that an organ's biological age can predict risk for diseases like cancer, dementia and heart disease.
The research, published in Lancet Digital Health, analyzed data from Whitehall II, a long-term British study on aging that has followed over 10,000 adults for more than 35 years.
Between 1997 and 1999, the study collected blood plasma samples from participants, then aged 45–69.
In the new study, those samples and follow-up data for 6,235 participants, who were now aged 65–89, were analyzed.
The researchers measured the gap between the real age and the biological age of nine organs: the heart, blood vessels, liver, immune system, pancreas, kidneys, lungs, intestines and brain.
Then, they tracked data on the diseases the participants developed over the next two decades.
Organs age at different rates, both between individuals and within the same body. Those with organs that aged faster had a higher risk of 30 of the 45 age-related diseases studied.
In some cases, the link was direct: for example, those with faster-aging lungs were more likely to develop respiratory diseases during the follow-up period.
But in other cases, the connection was more complicated. Accelerated kidney aging was linked not only to disease of the kidneys themselves, but also to disease of other organs such as the liver and pancreas.
And when several organs aged more quickly at the same time, the risk of kidney disease increased significantly.
"Surprisingly," the researchers said, dementia was not best predicted by brain aging, but by the biological age of the immune system.
According to them, the study shows the potential of a simple blood test to measure organ health specifically, much more practical than previous methods.
In a press release, lead author Mika Kivimaki, a professor in the Faculty of Brain Sciences at University College London, said that one day these tests could “advise whether a person needs to take extra care of a particular organ, and perhaps provide an early warning signal about the risk of a particular disease.”
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