Saliva Test for Biological Age Has High Accuracy

Endurance RP, a subsidiary of Deep Longevity, Inc, has created a saliva test that accurately measures biological age.  The Endurance researchers based their work on pre-existing tests which have been proven to examine blood-based biomarkers, specifically DNAm aging clocks. A separate division of Deep Longevity previously released DeepMAge, a test that measures DNA modification to determine biological age. Scientists have demonstrated the utility of DeepMAge for predicting the likelihood of cancer, dementia, and irritable bowel disease. 

Until the recent discovery by scientists at Endurance, DeepMAge required a blood sample to provide accurate data. The Endurance team modified the DeepMAge test to be nearly as accurate using saliva samples as blood samples. Through their work, the researchers reduced the error range of saliva-based biomarkers from 20.9 years to 4.7 years, bringing saliva-based biological age testing on par with blood-based testing. 

The researchers leveraged the heterogeneity of saliva to achieve their results. There are many different epithelial and immune cells within saliva, many of which are appropriate candidates for biological age testing. Researchers used a method known as cell-type deconvolution to obtain the composition of cells in a saliva sample and accurately target cellular biomarkers. Researchers can tweak the sample using cell-type deconvolution until its composition meets compatibility requirements for DeepMAge. 

Producing accurate biological age tests that do not require blood samples has been a significant hurdle for scientists. Now that the doors to saliva-based testing are beginning to open, researchers at Endurance hope to increase the scale of their research to produce easy-to-access and user-friendly biological age tests. Using saliva tests significantly lowers the barrier to testing, creating opportunities for therapeutic applications and research. 

Saliva-based biological age testing will likely increase the influx of patient data into biological age models. As specific biological age genotypes become better understood, companies like AgeCurve create bespoke epigenetic profiles of a patient’s biological age. The use of saliva-based tests, like the new variation of DeepMAge, allows more patient data to be extracted, increasing the utility of the results.