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Aging clocks

ProAge (proteomic age clock)

DEProAge (proteomische Altersuhr)

ProAge and similar 'proteomic age' clocks estimate your biological age from the levels of hundreds to thousands of proteins in your blood. The proteins are measured by aptamer-based (SomaScan) or proximity-extension (Olink) platforms. Landmark work by Lehallier and colleagues (2019, Nature Medicine) showed that your blood proteome changes non-linearly with age, in three distinct waves. Later models trained on up to about 3,000 proteins. These protein clocks capture signals that DNA-methylation clocks miss, from after transcription and from secreted proteins. Recent analyses suggest a faster protein-age goes with more age-related disease risk. But because each platform picks different proteins, the scores are not directly interchangeable across studies.

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Sources

  1. Lehallier B, Gate D, Schaum N, Nanasi T, Lee SE, Yousef H, Moran Losada P, Berdnik D, Keller A, Verghese J, Sathyan S, Franceschi C, Milman S, Barzilai N, Wyss-Coray T. (2019). Undulating changes in human plasma proteome profiles across the lifespan. *Nature Medicine*doi:10.1038/s41591-019-0673-2
  2. Argentieri MA, et al.. (2024). Proteomic aging clock predicts mortality and risk of common age-related diseases in diverse populations. *Nature Medicine*doi:10.1038/s41591-024-03164-7