Modelling biological age based on plasma peptides in Han Chinese adults

Age-related disease burdens increased over time, and whether plasma peptides can be used to accurately predict age in order to explain the variation in biological indicators remains inadequately understood. Here we first developed a biological age model based on plasma peptides in 1890 Chinese Han adults. Based on mass spectrometry, 84 peptides were detected with masses in the range of 0.6-10.0 kDa, and 13 of these peptides were identified as known amino acid sequences. Five of these thirteen plasma peptides, including fragments of apolipoprotein A-I (m/z 2883.99), fibrinogen alpha chain (m/z 3060.13), complement C3 (m/z 2190.59), complement C4-A (m/z 1898.21), and breast cancer type 2 susceptibility protein (m/z 1607.84) were finally included in the final model by performing a multivariate linear regression with stepwise selection. This biological age model accounted for 72.3% of the variation in chronological age. Furthermore, the linear correlation between the actual age and biological age was 0.851 (95% confidence interval: 0.836-0.864) and 0.842 (95% confidence interval: 0.810-0.869) in the training and validation sets, respectively. The biological age based on plasma peptides has potential positive effects on primary prevention, and its biological meaning warrants further investigation.