MINI REVIEW article
Front. Med.
Sec. Intensive Care Medicine and Anesthesiology
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1686899
This article is part of the Research TopicChallenges and Innovations in Healthcare Management and Long-Term Care for an Aging SocietyView all 29 articles
Biological Age in Critical Care: Current Evidence, Future Prospects, and Clinical Implications
Provisionally accepted- 1Second Affiliated Hospital, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
- 2Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China
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Accurate assessment of critically ill patients is essential for informing treatment decisions and predicting outcomes. While chronological age — defined by the number of years lived — is commonly used in clinical practice, it does not necessarily capture a patient's true physiological status. In contrast, biological age, which reflects genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors, offers a more precise indicator of overall health. Emerging evidence supports its potential as a robust predictor of mortality, intensive care readmission, and disease severity in conditions such as sepsis and respiratory failure. Notably, unlike the linear progression of chronological age, biological age can fluctuate in response to acute stress and may revert to lower levels if the patient's condition improves. This dynamic property underscores the utility of biological age in guiding invasive procedures, refining medication strategies, and optimizing nutrition and rehabilitation. The present study provides an overview of the definitions and methods used to calculate biological age, examines its current applications in critical care, and discusses its prospective roles in intensive care unit.
Keywords: biological age - chronological age, chronological age, critial care, Epigenetic clocks, Clinical Prediction
Received: 16 Aug 2025; Accepted: 03 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jiang and Han. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Libing Jiang, 2515168@zju.edu.cn
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