Thank you for visiting nature. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer. In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. To define metrics of phenotypic aging, it is essential to identify biological and environmental factors that influence the pace of aging.
We integrated individual deviations from population trajectories into a global longitudinal phenotypic metric of aging and demonstrate that accelerated longitudinal phenotypic aging is associated with faster physical and cognitive decline, faster accumulation of multimorbidity and shorter survival.
These associations are more robust compared with the use of phenotypic and epigenetic measurements at a single time point. Estimation of these metrics required repeated measures of multiple phenotypes over time but may uniquely facilitate the identification of mechanisms driving phenotypic aging and subsequent age-related functional decline.
These advances, however, are counterbalanced by trends toward a disproportionate expansion of the period of life characterized by diseases and disability in relationship to total life expectancy 2 , 3. Disease-specific prevention and early diagnosis strategies, cornerstones of modern medicine, contribute to longer life expectancy but only marginally extend health span 2 , 3. A complementary approach to improving health in the rapidly aging population is to recognize that increasing age is the single most important risk factor for most chronic diseases and adverse health outcomes 4 , 5.
Indeed, there is substantial heterogeneity in the accumulation of health and functional problems over the lifespan, and such heterogeneity is due to environmental and genetic differences that modulate the rate of aging. Studies in model organisms demonstrate that the rate of biological aging can be tweaked not only by genetic manipulation but also by behavioral and pharmacological interventions 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9.
