OMICmAge quantifies biological age by integrating multi-omics with electronic medical records
Biological aging reflects complex cellular and biochemical processes that can be measured across multiple omic layers. Using routine clinical laboratory data from ~31,000 participants in the Mass General Brigham Biobank, we developed EMRAge, a biomarker of mortality risk that can be broadly recapitulated across electronic medical records. Here we show that EMRAge can be modeled using elastic net regression with DNA methylation and multi-omics to generate DNAmEMRAge and OMICmAge, respectively. Both biomarkers are strongly associated with incident and prevalent chronic diseases and mortality, performing comparably or better than current biomarkers across discovery (Massachusetts General Brigham Aging Biobank Cohort, n = 3,451) and validation cohorts (TruDiagnostic, n = 14,213; Generation Scotland, n = 18,672). Importantly, OMICmAge leverages epigenetic biomarker proxies to integrate proteomic, metabolomic and clinical domains while remaining quantifiable from DNA methylation alone. This framework establishes an accessible, scalable measure of biological aging with potential to reveal molecular interconnections that shape healthspan and disease risk.
Authors
- Natàlia Carreras-Gallo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8559-2313)
- Michael McGeachie
- Priyadarshini Kachroo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5807-1333)
- Tavis L. Mendez
- Yulu Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2208-7242)
- Raghav Sehgal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9387-1758)
- Hannah Went
- Craig E. Wheelock (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8113-0653)
- Varun B. Dwaraka (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9033-3092)
- Qingwen Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2946-4947)
- Amber Dahlin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2534-5975)
- Judith Armstrong (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-4401-0986)
- Begum Sofina
- Jessica Lasky-Su
- Anne Richmond
- Su H. Chu
- Elizabeth Karlson
- Nicole Prince
- Nicholas J. W. Rattray
- Aaron Lin
- Kevin Mendez
- Rachel S. Kelly
- Scott T. Weiss
- Mahdi Moqri
- Andrea Aparicio
- Logan Turner
- Tao Guo
- M. Austin Argentieri
- Ryan Smith
- Riccardo E. Marioni
Institutions
- Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (US)
- Broad Institute (US)
- Brigham and Women's Hospital (US)
- National Institutes of Health (US)
- Karolinska University Hospital (SE)
- Harvard University (US)
- Duke University (US)
- University of Strathclyde (GB)
- Edinburgh Cancer Research (GB)
- Karolinska Institutet (SE)
- Yale University (US)
- Massachusetts General Hospital (US)
- Pediatrics and Genetics (US)
- National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (US)
- Rutgers Health (US)
- Stanford University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nature Aging
- Published
- 2026-02-25
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-026-01073-7
- Primary Topic
- Bioinformatics and Genomic Networks
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
- Wellcome Trust
- Scottish Government
- Scottish Funding Council
- Vetenskapsrådet
- National Institutes of Health
- Chief Scientist Office, Scottish Government Health and Social Care Directorate
- Medical Research Council
- National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
- National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences