New Delhi

Researchershave developed a blood-based indicator of age of an organ that can be used to assess its current age and predict the risk of a disease that might affect it 10 years later.

One's biological age measures how well the body functions, compared to the chronological age. However, the organs inside the body are all said to be ageing at different speeds.

The researchers, including those from the US' Stanford University, looked at 11 separate organ systems -- brain, muscle, heart, lung, arteries, liver, kidneys, pancreas, immune system, intestine and fat.

"We've developed a blood-based indicator of the age of your organs. With this indicator, we can assess the age of an organ today and predict the odds of your getting a disease associated with that organ 10 years later," senior author Tony Wyss-Coray, professor of neurology and neurological sciences, Stanford University School of Medicine, said. Findings published in the journal Nature Medicine showed that the biological age of one particular organ, the brain, plays an "outsized" role in determining how long an individual might live.

Nearly 45,000 people of ages 40 to 70 were randomly selected from the UK Biobank and monitored for up to 17 years for changes in their health status.