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Dr Gérald Kierzek (Medical Director)
An American biotechnology company announces that it has developed a technique to determine your biological age using a simple swab. Scientists have even tested it to see if you’re likely to die within a year. Would you be willing to test it? Dr Gérald Kierzek enlightens us.
The biotechnology company Tally Health developed this test – called CheekAge – with the aim of determining the biological age of an individual. Scientists are now trying to see if this same test is able to predict your risk of death within a year.
A simple test, carried out using a swab
This test is carried out with a simple swab, passed inside the cheek to collect cells. After analyzing the genetic material, scientists are able to determine the biological age of the subject to which they belong. In fact, researchers have developed what are called epigenetic clocks. They estimate a person’s biological age by measuring changes in their DNA methylation patterns over time.
As a reminder, the biological age of a cell can be greater or less than the chronological or actual age of an individual. Indeed, this biological age can be affected by genetics, but also by external factors such as stress, sleep, diet or even smoking.
Determine DNA modifications, data correlated with mortality
Once this test was developed, scientists wanted to go further and determine whether it was able to predict mortality. To do this, they carried out a study involving 1,513 men and women, followed throughout their lives by the Lothian Birth Cohorts (LBC) program at the University of Edinburgh. This long-running study follows two groups of people born in 1921 and 1936, collecting detailed health information and biological samples over many years.
Using blood samples from these 1,513 participants – 712 men and 801 women, aged 67 to 90 – the team applied its CheekAge algorithm. Even though CheekAge was designed to analyze cheek cells and nearly half of its DNA markers were not present in the blood data, it still showed a strong ability to predict mortality risk.
To put this into perspective, the researchers divided the participants into three groups based on their CheekAge results. The group with the highest biological age reached 50% mortality approximately 7.8 years earlier than the group with the youngest biological age.
“The fact that our epigenetic clock programmed for cheek cells predicts mortality when measuring the methylome in blood cells suggests that there are common mortality signals between tissues” explains Dr. Maxim Shokhirev, first author of the study, in a press release. “This implies that a simple, non-invasive cheek swab can be a valuable alternative for studying and tracking the biology of aging.”
What should we think of this type of test?
In the Daily MailAdele Murrell, professor of epigenetics at the University of Bath, indicates that she does not see “no evidence that this CheekAge test will be able to predict the day, or even the year, that someone will die”. She also specifies that “DNA changes are theoretically reversible, meaning the method would only be useful in warning people that they could be heading toward early extinction.
According to Dusko Ilic, professor of stem cell science at King’s College London, “such tests provide probabilistic risk assessments rather than concrete predictions. The focus on mortality in this context has the potential to cause anxiety unnecessary and promote a fatalistic mindset in some people, rather than promoting concrete knowledge about health and well-being” he warns.
The opinion of our medical director, Dr Gérald Kierzek
An observation shared by Dr Gérald Kierzek, emergency doctor and medical director of Doctissimo. “The death prediction test is actually an assessment of biological age versus chronological age. It is done by evaluating the degree of methylation of certain areas of the DNA, as when we “measure” the length of telomeres. Depending on the degree of methylation, we evaluate the physiological age. calls back the doctor.
“But these tests are imprecise, anxiety-provoking and should not be qualified as predictive of death. They should rather encourage people to take care of their health to improve it and reduce their physiological age“.