A blood test is able to show us how quickly our internal organs are aging, and even predict which of them may soon develop problems, according to the Stanford University scientific team.

As the BBC reports, the team claims that with this test it can monitor the health of 11 key parts of the body, including the heart, brain and lungs. After testing thousands of adults, mostly middle-aged or older, researchers concluded that one in five healthy adults over the age of 50 may have at least one organ that ages rapidly.

And one to two in 100 may have multiple organs that are older than their birth age.

Knowing that some of our organs age faster could help identify health problems that may be showing up, researchers say in the journal Nature.

Organ age gap

For example, an “aging” heart increases the risk of heart failure, while a rapidly aging brain may be more prone to dementia.

In the study, rapid aging of one or more organs was associated with a higher risk of certain diseases and death over the next 15 years.

The body parts they checked included:

-Brain
-Heart
-Liver
-Lung
-Intestine
-Kidney
-Fat
-Blood vessels (arteries)
-Immune tissue
-Muscle
-Pancreas

The blood test looks for levels of thousands of proteins to give clues about which organs are aging at different rates.

The researchers trained a machine learning algorithm to make the predictions using multiple blood test results and patient data.

One of the researchers, Dr Tony Wyss-Coray, explained: “When we compared the biological age of each of these organs for each individual with their counterparts in a large group of people without overt serious disease, we found that 18.4% of of people aged 50 or older had at least one organ that aged significantly faster than average. We found that these people are at increased risk for disease in that organ over the next 15 years.”

The university has now filed paperwork to patent the test, in case it can be used and sold in the future. However, more studies are needed to test how effective the test is.