Scientists at Osaka University in Japan have devised a new AI model to estimate a person’s biological age — a measure of how well their body has aged, rather than just counting the years since birth.Using just five drops of blood, this new method analyses 22 key steroids and their interactions to provide a more precise health assessment. The team’s breakthrough study, published in Science Advances, offers a potential step forward in personalised health management, allowing for earlier detection of age-related health risks and tailored interventions.
“Our bodies rely on hormones to maintain homeostasis, so we thought, why not use these as key indicators of aging?” said Dr Qiuyi Wang, co-first author of the study. To test this idea, the research team focused on steroid hormones, which play a crucial role in metabolism, immune function, and stress response.
The team developed a deep neural network (DNN) model that incorporates steroid metabolism pathways, making it the first AI model to explicitly account for the interactions between different steroid molecules.
One of the study’s most striking findings involves cortisol, a steroid hormone commonly associated with stress. The researchers found that when cortisol levels doubled, biological age increased by approximately 1.5 times.
This suggests that chronic stress could accelerate aging at a biochemical level, reinforcing the importance of stress management in maintaining long-term health. “Stress is often discussed in general terms, but our findings provide concrete evidence that it has a measurable impact on biological aging,” said Professor Toshifumi Takao, a corresponding author and an expert in analytical chemistry and mass spectrometry.