“These signatures depict differences in how people age, and they show promise in predicting healthy ageing, changes in cognitive and physical function, survival and age-related diseases like disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer,” the research team said.

“We can now detect and measure thousands of biomarkers from a small amount of blood with the idea of eventually being able to predict who is at risk of a wide range of diseases long before any clinical signs become apparent.”

Companies are already offering blood tests which claim to estimate a person’s lifespan, however this is done using DNA analysis and does not give insights into the likelihood of developing specific conditions.

The technique works by measuring structures at the end of a person’s chromosomes, called telomeres, which scientists believe are an important indicator of the speed at which a person is ageing.

The researchers behind the new study, which is published in the journal Ageing Cell, say the biomarker signature technique could also be used to speed up long and laborious drug trials.

Prof Paola Sebastiani said that rather than waiting “years and years” for clinical outcomes, instead trials may be able to rely on biomarker signatures far earlier to detect the effect of a trial medicine.