Research squareJun 22, 2026

A fat-related metabolic age score to track how lifestyle and diet affect risk of metabolic diseases

Longevity & Aging Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗OA ↗

Updated Jun 23, 2026

Abstract

The environmentally adjusted metabolic age score (EAmAge) was derived from a cohort of 10,339 individuals.

EAmAge isolates intrinsic ageing biology relevant to neurodegeneration and chronic disease by statistically removing major environmental influences.
Validation of EAmAge was conducted across three independent cohorts totaling 9,835 individuals.
Stronger and more consistent associations were observed between EAmAge and incident Alzheimer's disease-related dementia, cardiovascular events, and all-cause mortality compared to an unadjusted lipidomic age model.
EAmAge was linked to Alzheimer's disease-related biomarkers, including amyloid burden, reduced glucose metabolism, and hippocampal atrophy.
This biomarker may improve risk stratification by disentangling intrinsic metabolic ageing from environmental confounding.

Simplified

Biological age scores capture ageing heterogeneity beyond chronological age but are often dominated by lifestyle and environmental exposures, limiting clinical interpretability. We developed an environmentally adjusted metabolic age score (EAmAge) to isolate intrinsic ageing biology relevant to neurodegeneration and chronic disease. Major environmental influences were statistically removed from plasma lipidomic profiles before constructing an age-prediction model using ridge regression. EAmAge was derived in the AusDiab cohort (n = 10,339) and validated across three independent cohorts (BHS, ADNI and ASPREE; total n = 9,835). Compared with an unadjusted lipidomic age model (mAge_orig), EAmAge showed stronger and more consistent associations with incident Alzheimer's disease-related dementia, cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality. EAmAge was also associated with Alzheimer's disease-related biomarkers, including amyloid burden, reduced glucose metabolism and hippocampal atrophy. These findings establish EAmAge as a robust and partially modifiable biomarker that improves risk stratification by disentangling intrinsic metabolic ageing from environmental confounding.