Our body does not age in lockstep. A study from Vienna published in Nature Medicine in August 2026 shows that individual organs age at very different rates – and that their biological age may soon be estimated from a blood sample.
How it was studied
The team led by André Rendeiro at CeMM, the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, used tissue samples from the US GTEx project. A total of 25,712 microscopic tissue images from 983 deceased individuals covering 40 tissue types – from the brain and heart to the lungs, kidneys and skin – were broken down into around 480 million image tiles and analysed by machine-learning image recognition models.
This resulted in organ-specific “tissue clocks” that estimate the biological age of a tissue with a mean deviation of 4.9 years. The researchers then linked these values with gene activity data from the blood of the same individuals.
The key results
- Early ageing: the lungs, kidneys, pancreas and adrenal glands showed accelerated signs of ageing as early as between 20 and 40 years of age.
- Uterus: a marked jump around the menopause.
- Diseases: kidney failure was associated with accelerated ageing in several tissues, diabetes particularly in the pancreas.
- Blood test: signatures derived from blood data recognised ageing patterns associated with Alzheimer’s disease (mainly in the brain), Crohn’s disease (in the digestive tract), diabetes or stroke.
Assessment
Previous age tests such as epigenetic clocks usually provide a single number for the whole body. Organ-specific measurements, by contrast, could show where prevention should start – and how well new anti-ageing therapies actually reach individual organs. This is still research: all data come from a single source, the results describe associations, not causes, and the accuracy of the blood test must be confirmed in independent groups of living people. The study was funded in part by Angelini Ventures.
Note: This article is for general information only and does not replace medical advice.
Sources
- Buljan I, Abila E, Zheng Y, … Rendeiro AF. Nature Medicine 2026, DOI 10.1038/s41591-026-04566-5
- ÖAW/CeMM: Organe altern unterschiedlich schnell (14.08.2026)
- analytica-world: Organs age at different speeds
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