This Test Can Predict Your Risk Of Mortality, Study Shows

You can read your biological clock with a simple swab of the cheek.

Tally Health, A New York-based biotechnology company, has launched Cheek Age, an epigenetic clock that uses DNA data collected from cheek cells. Last month, Tally Health scientists published their research in Frontiers in Aging. According to their findings, CheekAge can accurately predict mortality risk. CheekAge predicts age by using methylation marks in the DNA.

Scientists used cheek swabs from participants aged from 18 to 93. They paired patterns of DNA methylation in the cheek cells to determine an overall health score, which also considers factors such as a person’s body mass index (BMI), stress levels, and other lifestyle factors.

“The fact that our epigenetic clock trained on cheek cells predicts mortality when measuring the methylome in blood cells suggests there are common mortality signals across tissues,” Maxim Shokhirev, Ph.D., head of Computational Biology and Data Science at Tally Health in New York, said in an interview with Neuroscience News.

“This implies that a simple, non-invasive cheek swab can be a valuable alternative for studying and tracking the biology of aging,” Shokhirev, who co-authored the study, told the outlet.

Shokhirev and his team also used data from the Lothian Birth Cohorts (LBC), a long-term research program that tracks participants’ aging from childhood through adulthood. In the LBC, scientists collected blood samples from 15,000 people every three years and tracked changes in DNA methylations.

One goal of the LBC study was to link differences in cognitive aging to lifestyle factors and biomedical, genetic, and brain imaging data. Researchers tested the CheekAge technology using blood samples from the LBC study.

”Using cheek cells to predict aging and related health issues is fascinating and could be a promising method. It’s especially intriguing because it is less invasive than traditional blood tests, potentially making it a better choice for routine health checks and keeping us healthy,” Brittany Ferri, Ph.D., an occupational therapist with the National Council on Aging, told Medical News Today.