A single biological age result tells us about biological aging at one point in time.
But what happens when the same measurements are repeated months or years later?
Researchers can then examine how a biological-aging measure changes over time. This can provide information about whether the measured aspects of aging are changing faster or more slowly.
A two-year study in the United States provides an example.
Researchers studied 220 healthy, non-obese adults who were randomly assigned either to reduce their calorie intake or to continue eating as usual. Clinical measurements were collected repeatedly during the study and used to assess biological aging in several different ways.
Using KDM Biological Age, the biological-age measure increased over time in the control group, while the calorie-restriction group showed a different trajectory.
Using PhenoAge, biological age increased in both groups, but the increase was substantially slower in the calorie-restriction group.
However, a third measure, Homeostatic Dysregulation, did not show a significant difference between the groups.
This is an important distinction.
Repeated biological age measurements can help researchers examine how biological-aging measures change over time, rather than looking only at a single result. But different methods do not necessarily show the same pattern of change.
This also means that a change in a biological age result should not automatically be interpreted as a direct measurement of how fast the whole body is aging. The meaning of the change depends on what the test measures and how the biological-age estimate is calculated.
