(Nature) – An age ‘clock’ based on some 200 proteins found in the blood can predict a person’s risk of developing 18 chronic illnesses, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.

The clock’s accuracy raises the prospect of developing a single test that could describe a person’s risk of many chronic conditions, says the project’s lead scientist Austin Argentieri, a population-health researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “Ultimately, wanting to live longer will come down to preventing chronic diseases,” he says. The study was published in Nature Medicine on 8 August. (Read More)