Overview
- Researchers at Charité reported in PNAS a hair‑root assay that estimates a person’s internal circadian time from one sample.
- The test measures activity of 17 clock genes in hair‑root cells and uses machine learning to infer the timing from a single daytime sample that patients can mail in.
- In head‑to‑head checks with the melatonin dim‑light onset standard, the assay showed comparable accuracy to the lab‑based method.
- Applied to more than 4,000 home‑collected samples, the data found people in their mid‑20s were on average about one hour later than over‑50s, and tested women were about six minutes earlier than men.
- BodyClock Technologies, a Charité spin‑out that gathered the >4,000 samples, aims to market the assay as standardization and clinical validation proceed, and the authors disclosed related patents and shares.