Understanding systemic chronic inflammation

Not all inflammation is the same

Inflammation helps defend the body. When that response persists, it can contribute to tissue damage and age-related disease.

Acute inflammation is a short-term response to injury or infection: the swelling, redness and pain around a wound.

Systemic chronic inflammation (SCI) is persistent immune activity and inflammatory signaling. It can build over time as lifestyle and environmental factors interact with the body.

Contributors studied: chronic infection, physical inactivity, visceral obesity, gut microbiome imbalance, diet, social isolation and stress, disrupted sleep and circadian rhythms, pollutants, toxicants and tobacco.

Associated health effects: metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver, cardiovascular disease, cancer, depression, autoimmune and neurodegenerative conditions, muscle loss, osteoporosis and immune aging. These are factors and associations discussed in the research (Furman et al., Nature Medicine, 2019), not a prediction of an individual's health.

Routine inflammation markers do not capture the full complexity of age-related SCI. Edifice's work focuses on immune-protein patterns that help describe this longer-term inflammatory state.

How iAge® was developed

The Stanford 1000 Immunomes Project studied how genetic and environmental factors shape the immune system across a broad range of ages. Stanford's Human Immune Monitoring Center measured proteins, immune cells and their function, alongside gene expression and genetic variation. The dataset established reference values and revealed patterns associated with health and disease.

Deep learning was used to capture complex, nonlinear relationships among inflammatory molecules. Cross-validation and health-outcome analyses assessed how the model performs, accounting for chronological age, cholesterol, sex, medication history and other factors.

What the research found

The published iAge study (Sayed et al., Nature Aging, 2021) links inflammatory aging to multimorbidity (the presence of multiple conditions), immune aging, frailty and cardiovascular aging. In the same study, baseline iAge predicted frailty scores seven years later in a subset of 29 older adults. This is a research finding, not a seven-year forecast for every person who takes the test.

The multimorbidity research covered ten domains: cancer; cardiovascular; respiratory; gastrointestinal; urologic; neurologic; endocrine and metabolic; musculoskeletal; genital and reproductive; and psychiatric conditions. These are research outcome categories, not ten separate diagnostic tests included with iAge.

iAge samples are analyzed in a CLIA-certified laboratory.