A study from Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan suggests that the gap between a person’s biological age and chronological age may help predict future health risks, including mortality and hospitalizations.
Chronological age refers to the number of years a person has lived. Biological age is an estimate of how old the body appears to be, based on health indicators such as blood test results, organ function and levels of inflammation. Biological age may be higher or lower than one’s actual age depending on overall health, lifestyle and disease risk.
The difference between these two measures may provide doctors with a more accurate picture of how quickly a person is aging biologically than chronological age alone. It could also help identify individuals at higher risk of illness before symptoms appear.
“The findings indicate that the gap between biological and chronological age may in the future become a relatively accessible and simple measure for identifying people at increased risk, even before the onset of significant diseases,” said Dr. Avigail Goshen, the study’s co-lead author.
The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Aging and Disease, followed 2,597 participants in Sheba’s Executive Survey Program over an average of 9.2 years. The program is a long-term health monitoring cohort. The study included 6,772 repeated medical measurements.
Researchers used an artificial intelligence model that estimates biological age from routine blood tests, including metabolic, hematological, renal, hepatic and inflammatory markers.
The findings showed that each additional one-year increase in biological age over chronological age was associated with a 15% increase in the risk of mortality, even after adjusting for age, sex, body mass index, smoking and hypertension. Each additional year of gap was also linked to a 6% increase in hospitalization rates. Participants whose biological age was three years or more higher than their chronological age showed higher mortality rates during follow-up compared with those with smaller gaps.
Professor Tzipi Strauss, director of Sheba’s Longevity Center and co-author of the study, said: “In recent years the field of longevity has moved from a theoretical discussion to a clinical field and practical research. The study demonstrates how routinely collected medical information can become a tool for understanding the rate of personal aging and developing personalized prevention approaches.”
Researchers emphasize that the study is observational and cannot establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship. However, they suggest the biological age gap may reflect underlying physiological stress, hidden disease processes or reduced body resilience.
The findings—if validated for clinical use—raise the possibility that biological age measurements could eventually support improved long-term health risk assessment and preventive care planning.
Because the measure relies on routine blood tests already widely used in healthcare, researchers say it should be relatively easy to integrate into existing healthcare systems.
Tracking biological age over time could also help clinicians and researchers assess whether lifestyle changes or medical treatments are slowing the pace of biological aging, potentially informing more individualized treatment approaches in the future.
