Biological age estimation using circulating blood biomarkers

Biological age captures physiological deterioration better than chronological age and is amenable to interventions. Blood-based biomarkers have been identified as suitable candidates for biological age estimation. This study aims to improve biological age estimation using machine learning models and a feature-set of 60 circulating biomarkers available from the UK Biobank ( n = 306,116). We implement an Elastic-Net derived Cox model with 25 selected biomarkers to predict mortality risk (C-Index = 0.778; 95% CI [0.767–0.788]), which outperforms the well-known blood-biomarker based PhenoAge model (C-Index = 0.750; 95% CI [0.739–0.761]), providing a C-Index lift of 0.028 representing an 11% relative increase in predictive value. Importantly, we then show that using common clinical assay panels, with few biomarkers, alongside imputation and the model derived on the full set of biomarkers, does not substantially degrade predictive accuracy from the theoretical maximum achievable for the available biomarkers. Biological age is estimated as the equivalent age within the same-sex population which corresponds to an individual’s mortality risk. Values ranged between 20-years younger and 20-years older than individuals’ chronological age, exposing the magnitude of ageing signals contained in blood markers. Thus, we demonstrate a practical and cost-efficient method of estimating an improved measure of Biological Age, available to the general population.