New 'biological aging' test predicts your odds of dying within the next 12 months

A test that uses cells from the inside of your cheek may accurately predict the risk of death within the upcoming year, new research hints.

This study, published Oct. 1 in the journal Frontiers in Aging, offers promising support for CheekAge, a new tool that uses cheek — or "buccal" — samples to estimate a person's risk of dying within one year. In a group of adults ages 69 to 101, the test was strongly associated with the risk of death from any cause. A set increase in the study subjects' CheekAge corresponded to a 21% bump in their risk of death within the next 12 months.

CheekAge is a type of epigenetic clock, a tool that measures a person's "biological age" by looking at patterns of chemicals attached to their DNA. In many cases, "biological age is much more telling [about the Health of an individual] than the years that they've lived on this planet," said David Furman, an associate professor at the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California, who was not involved in the new study.

The long-term hope for tools like CheekAge is to help people slow down or prevent biological aging. But for now, such tools can't tell you how to accomplish that feat, Furman and first study author Maxim Shokhirev, head of computational biology and data science at Tally Health in New York, told Live Science.

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What CheekAge does — and what it can't do

In general, epigenetic clocks examine aging of the blood and other tissues to make predictions about a person's chronological age and their risk of death and age-related diseases, like cancer. The most common marker of aging that the clocks look for is DNA methylation, a process by which small molecules called methyl groups attach to DNA over time. These molecules help control gene expression, turning certain genes on and off.

Scientists trained CheekAge using cheek swabs from people ages 18 to 93. They paired patterns of DNA methylation in the cheek cells to an overall score for health, which considered factors such as a person's stress levels, educational and body mass index (BMI). A person's "CheekAge score" was thus tied to their health status and apparent degree of biological aging.