Medical News Observer

Key Points

• AI Blood Test for Aging – Uses hormone levels to predict biological age accurately.
• Stress Speeds Up Aging – High cortisol levels can increase biological age by 1.5 times.
• Personalized Health Plans – Helps create custom wellness programs and detect diseases early.

 

A New Way to Measure Aging

Scientists at Osaka University have developed a new blood test that can estimate a person’s biological age. This test uses artificial intelligence (AI) to study hormone levels in the blood, providing a more accurate way to measure aging. By looking at stress-related and gender-specific hormones, this breakthrough could lead to better health monitoring, early disease detection, and personalized medical treatments.

How It Works

This test focuses on steroid hormones, which control many important functions in the body, including metabolism, stress response, and immune system health. Researchers collected blood samples from 148 people aged 20 to 73. They trained an AI model on 98 samples and used the remaining 50 to check its accuracy. Instead of just measuring hormone levels, the AI compared how different hormones interact, making the results more reliable.

One key discovery was the impact of cortisol, a hormone linked to stress. The study found that when cortisol levels doubled, a person’s biological age increased by 1.5 times. This means chronic stress might speed up aging at a chemical level. The test also found differences between men and women in how their bodies process hormones, showing the importance of personalized health assessments.

Possible Uses and FDA Approval

This AI-powered test could help doctors in many ways, including:

• Creating Personalized Health Plans – Doctors could develop custom wellness plans based on a person’s unique hormone levels.
• Detecting Diseases Early – The test could help identify risks for conditions like heart disease, osteoporosis, and Alzheimer’s before symptoms appear.
• Managing Stress and Aging – People could learn how stress affects their bodies and take steps to slow down aging.

This test is still being studied and has not yet been approved by the FDA. However, since it only requires five drops of blood, it could become a simple and widely used tool for health checkups in the future.

Implications

This new test could be a big step forward in medicine, making tracking how a person is aging easier. Scientists plan to improve the AI model by studying more people and including other health markers. In the future, we might be able to slow down aging and improve quality of life by making better health choices based on our unique biology.

As AI and medical research continue to grow, this discovery could help people live healthier, longer lives by allowing them to understand and control the aging process more effectively.

Reference

Wang, Qiuyi, Zi Wang, Kenji Mizuguchi, and Toshifumi Takao. “Biological Age Prediction Using a DNN Model Based on Pathways of Steroidogenesis.” Science Advances 11, no. 11 (March 14, 2025): eadt2624. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.adt2624.