This 'biological ageing' test can tell if you are going to die in one year. Here's how it works

In new research, experts have suggested that the cells present inside the cheek of a person may be able to predict accurately how much they face the risk of death in the year ahead.

The study was published in the journalFrontiers in Aging on October 1 and has supported CheekAge which is a new tool to predict a person's risk of dying in a year using their cheek or "buccal" samples.

In the study carried out, a group of adults between the ages of 69 to 101 were tested for the risk of death and CheekAge showed that there was a 21 per cent increase in their risk of death in the next 12 months.

Add WION as a Preferred Source

All about CheekAge: A new age death clock for humans

CheekAge is a kind of epigenetic clock which is a tool that measures the "biological age" of a person by studying their DNA and the chemical patterns related to it.

Also Read:A new 'game-changing' blood test will detect 12 types of cancers. Here's all about it

Speaking to Live Science, Associate professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California David Furman said that in a lot of cases "biological age is much more telling [about the health of an individual] than the years that they've lived on this planet."

Tools like CheekAge are expected to eventually prevent biological ageing or help people slow down ageing.

CheekAge has been created by scientists in a way that it uses cheek swabs from people ages 18 to 93.

The tool pairs patterns of DNA methylation present in the cheek cells and gives an overall score for health after considering factors like educational and body mass index (BMI) and a person'sstress levels.

Hence, the "CheekAge score" of a person is thus dependent on their health status and degree of biological ageing.

Also Read:Long Covid cause found? Severe infections inflame brainstem, the control centre of brain, says study

"We were surprised to see that CheekAge worked so well in a different tissue. This may suggest that CheekAge is picking up on health signals that are conserved between different tissue types," said first study authorMaxim Shokhirev to Live Science.

"We can't predict if someone will live or die within a year, but we can see an increased or decreased risk of all-cause mortality," he added.

More research is required to determine if the test is able to predict a person's other health outcomes like age-related disease.

"One of the primary goals [of making epigenetic clocks] is to identify interventions that can influence or slow down these innate ageing mechanisms," saidSteve Horvath, a professor of human genetics and biostatistics at UCLA while speaking to Live Science.

(With inputs from agencies)