What is DunedinPACE and what does it tell us about ageing?
DunedinPACE measures how quickly you are biologically ageing and is associated with disease and mortality, but whether improving the score yields a measurable health benefit has not yet been demonstrated in long-term studies.
DunedinPACE is a blood test that makes it possible to measure how quickly someone is biologically ageing. The test looks at methylation patterns on DNA -- small chemical tags that indicate how active genes are. The score is built from twenty years of follow-up data on nineteen different organ functions in a large group of people all born in the same year (the Dunedin birth cohort in New Zealand). A higher score means faster ageing, which goes hand in hand with a greater risk of disease, physical limitations and premature death.
The test also has a brain-scan variant called DunedinPACNI. This measures the pace of ageing using an MRI scan rather than blood. A faster score on that variant is associated with accelerated brain atrophy, cognitive decline, a higher risk of dementia and earlier death. In two large studies conducted in the US and the UK (more than 19,000 participants combined), a comparable method also consistently predicted disease and mortality.
What makes DunedinPACE interesting for longevity research is that the score appears to move in response to lifestyle and life experiences. People who faced adversity in childhood age faster later in life. Those who are more highly educated than their parents age more slowly, and that factor explained roughly half of the association with lower mortality. The MIND diet (focused on brain-supporting nutrition) was associated with a slower score and a lower risk of dementia and death.
The most striking result comes from the CALERIE trial: eating 25% less for two years slowed the pace of ageing as measured by DunedinPACE. The effect was small, but it is the first randomised study to show that something can measurably influence the pace of biological ageing. Other widely used epigenetic clocks (such as PhenoAge and GrimAge) showed no significant change with the same intervention. Hard endpoints such as reduced disease or longer lifespan have not yet been measured in long-term studies.
A small study (70 women) also found that women with a lower ovarian reserve had faster-ageing cells surrounding their eggs. That finding is preliminary and requires further confirmation. All existing evidence around DunedinPACE is largely observational in nature: the test measures a pattern, but whether adjusting the score actually leads to a longer healthy life has yet to be established.
All claims are based on associative or observational studies, with one exception: the CALERIE trial is a randomised study (PMID 37118425). The remaining findings (PMID 35029144, 38407506, 38427354, 40595015, 40651520, 40419803) are cross-sectional or prospective observational. Causal conclusions cannot yet be drawn for most of the associations.