Back

Combining blood biochemistry and glycan ages for an even more prognostic biological age

Frkatovic-Hodzic, A.; Bortz, J. D.; Guariglia, A.; MacDonald-Dunlop, E.; Mijakovac, A.; Simunic Briski, N.; Ward, P.; Polasek, O.; Lauc, G.; Geer, M.; Wilson, J. F.; Joshi, P. K.

2025-09-15 public and global health
10.1101/2025.09.14.25335700 medRxiv
Show abstract

Glycan- and blood marker-based biological ages are prognostic of health and survival. However, glycans and haematology measures (as opposed to blood biochemistry) are rarely available together in outcome-based studies. Consequently, no dataset available to us could unify these biological age estimates. We therefore developed a new measure, PlasmaAge, using only biochemistry markers measured in ORCADES but trained within UK Biobank. In ORCADES, PlasmaAge, a glycan-based age, and their composite all predicted mortality, improving AUC over chronological age alone by 0.026, 0.032, and 0.041 respectively. We confirmed these effects on mortality in Croatian cohorts. PlasmaAge provides a new estimate of biological ageing for studies where only biochemistry data are available. Moreover, we show that PlasmaAge and glycan-based age can be combined into a more prognostic composite biological age, suitable for use in both research and commercial settings.

Matching journals

The top 4 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

1
Aging Cell
○ 165 papers in training set
Top 0.1%
27.5%
Similar papers in this journal
2
eLife
● 5828 papers in training set
Top 7%
12.3%
Similar papers in this journal
3
Aging
○ 75 papers in training set
Top 0.1%
7.0%
Similar papers in this journal
4
Nature Communications
○ 5641 papers in training set
Top 34%
3.3%
Similar papers in this journal
50% of probability mass above
5
The Journals of Gerontology: Series A
◐ 29 papers in training set
Top 0.1%
3.3%
Similar papers in this journal
6
GeroScience
○ 109 papers in training set
Top 0.8%
2.8%
7
Scientific Reports
○ 3612 papers in training set
Top 39%
2.5%
8
Experimental Gerontology
○ 12 papers in training set
Top 0.1%
2.5%
9
Life Science Alliance
● 285 papers in training set
Top 2%
2.2%
10
Frontiers in Medicine
○ 120 papers in training set
Top 2%
1.8%
11
Human Brain Mapping
○ 329 papers in training set
Top 3%
1.6%
12
eBioMedicine
○ 183 papers in training set
Top 4%
1.2%
13
PLOS ONE
● 5266 papers in training set
Top 51%
1.2%
14
American Journal of Epidemiology
◐ 67 papers in training set
Top 0.9%
1.2%
15
Demographic Research
● 11 papers in training set
Top 0.1%
1.1%
16
Cell Reports Medicine
○ 153 papers in training set
Top 4%
1.0%
17
PLOS Computational Biology
● 1863 papers in training set
Top 18%
1.0%
18
International Journal of Epidemiology
◐ 88 papers in training set
Top 1%
1.0%
19
BMC Medicine
○ 176 papers in training set
Top 4%
0.9%
20
Biology Methods and Protocols
◐ 61 papers in training set
Top 2%
0.9%
21
iScience
○ 1154 papers in training set
Top 34%
0.9%
22
Social Science & Medicine
○ 17 papers in training set
Top 0.4%
0.9%
23
Nature Medicine
○ 125 papers in training set
Top 3%
0.9%
24
International Journal of Infectious Diseases
○ 129 papers in training set
Top 3%
0.6%
25
European Journal of Epidemiology
○ 43 papers in training set
Top 0.9%
0.6%
26
Frontiers in Physiology
○ 106 papers in training set
Top 3%
0.6%
27
Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences
○ 11 papers in training set
Top 0.4%
0.5%
28
Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience
○ 74 papers in training set
Top 2%
0.5%
29
Epigenetics
○ 50 papers in training set
Top 0.9%
0.5%
30
BMJ Open
● 601 papers in training set
Top 13%
0.5%

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.