Medicine

A lifespan clock tells the biology of time

8 Dec 2025 2 min read

AI Insight

Researchers developed a comprehensive lifespan clock derived from millions of routine clinical records, demonstrating that human development and aging constitute a single, continuous physiological trajectory rather than distinct biological phases. This model integrates longitudinal health data across the full human lifecycle to identify biological timing patterns associated with health and disease progression. The clock enables the detection of early biological deviations that may precede clinical manifestations of disease, offering a quantitative framework for understanding aging mechanisms.

Why it matters

A validated lifespan clock of this scale could substantially improve early disease detection in clinical practice and inform preventive strategies tailored to an individual's biological age rather than chronological age. This has direct implications for precision medicine, population health monitoring, and the design of age-targeted interventions.

Confidence
6/10Peer-reviewedMedicine

A full‑lifecycle clock derived from millions of routine clinical records reveals that human development and aging form a continuous physiological trajectory, enabling early disease detection and mechanistic insights for preventive and precision health.

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Fig. 1: EHRFormer‑based full‑lifecycle clock.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Buck Institute for Research on Aging, Novato, CA, USA

    Noa Rappaport, Annalise Schweickart & Nathan D. Price

  2. Phenome Health, Seattle, WA, USA

    Noa Rappaport

  3. Institute for Systems Biology, Seattle, WA, USA

    Noa Rappaport

  4. Thorne HealthTech, New York, NY, USA

    Nathan D. Price

Authors

  1. Noa Rappaport
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  2. Annalise Schweickart
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  3. Nathan D. Price
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to
Nathan D. Price.

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Competing interests

N.D.P. served as a peer reviewer of the paper under discussion. He is chief scientific officer at Thorne and has a profit interest in the company. He also serves as an advisor to the Institute for Healthier Living in Abu Dhabi and various companies in which he has equity, including: Vitaliti, Rue Four, ProPetDx and Sera Prognostics. N.R. and A.S. declare no competing interests.

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Rappaport, N., Schweickart, A. & Price, N.D. A lifespan clock tells the biology of time.
Nat Med (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-025-04095-7

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Key concepts

Lifespan Biological aging Longitudinal study