THE SCIENCE

BUILT BY THE 
SCIENTISTS 
WHO WROTE

 the papers.

The world's first epigenetic age test built exclusively on female biology — from a team of industry experts.

8,436 women in the validation dataset — not a mixed-sex average

Backed by peer-reviewed papers from the founding clinical team

CLIA-certified lab · results in 4 weeks · no needles

Discover Your Ummu Age

THE FOUNDING TEAM

THE FOUNDING TEAM

Founder · KCH Hepatologist

CEO, Chief Medical Officer

Dr Saima Ajaz

BSc, MBBS, MPhil, PhD, Dip IBLM/BSLM, DABRM· Patents for novel biomarker panels · King's College Hospital · Founder, LIVFIT

Clinical Authority

Prof. Kypros Nicolaides

Founder, Fetal Medicine Foundation · King's College London · 100+ countries trained

Algorithm Architect

Chris Collins BSc PGc PGd

Published epigenetic clock researcher · Muhdo Health · ORCID: 0000-0003-2850-1950

OB/GYN Clinical Lead

Dr Nitu Bajekal

Consultant Obstetrician & Gynaecologist · 30 years NHS · Female biology specialist

41

Unique CpG sites

1,500+

Women in Training Set

8,436

Women in Validation

R² 0.849

Accuracy Score

“Epigenetics lets us see ageing written into the genome. But until now, all available clocks treated male and female biology as interchangeable. UmmuAge was designed to change that — designed for female health with no interference of male physiology, understanding fertility, recovery, menopause and true age better than any other metric.”

Title

CHRIS COLLINS, BSc, PGc, PGd

[published author of 3 epigenetic clocks]

ORCID: 0000-0003-2850-1950 ↗
UNDERSTANDING THE SCIENCE

WHAT IS Epigenetics, REALLY?

Your DNA is fixed from birth. Your epigenome is the layer on top that decides which parts of your DNA actually get used — and it changes throughout your life based on how you live.

Your DNA is your biological blueprint. But a blueprint alone doesn't build anything. Something has to decide which instructions to follow, when, and how loudly. That decision-making layer is called your epigenome. The most important mechanism within it is called DNA methylation.

Your DNA — The Library

The genetic code you inherited from your parents. Fixed, stable, the same for your entire life. Think of it as the full library you were born with.

Inherited at birth

Stable for life

Carries genetic potential

Your Epigenome — The Reading Instructions

Which books are open, which are bookmarked, which are gathering dust. Unlike your DNA, this changes constantly in response to how you live — and it's measurable.

Updates through life

Shaped by lifestyle

Responsive to change

DNA Methylation

THE Control SYSTEM FOR YOUR GENES

Tiny chemical tags attach to your DNA and act like dimmer switches — turning genes up, down, or completely off.

DNA methylation occurs when small chemical tags called methyl groups attach to specific regions of your DNA. Unlike your DNA sequence — which is fixed — methylation patterns change throughout your life in response to how you live.

Turn genes on

Low methylation → gene expressed

Turn genes down

Partial methylation → reduced activity

Or silence them entirely

High methylation → switched off

How Your Lifestyle Shapes Your Epigenome

TEN THINGS QUIETLY Rewriting YOUR BIOLOGY

Your DNA is fixed from birth. Your epigenome is the layer on top that decides which parts of your DNA actually get used — and it changes throughout your life based on how you live.
🥗 Nutrition 😰 Stress 😴 Sleep 🌿 Environmental exposures 🏃 Exercise ⏳ Ageing 💡 Lifestyle habits 💊 Medication 🧠 Psyche 💰 Social & economic status

Why Epigenetics Matters More Than a Blood Test

THE Test THAT SEES PROBLEMS BEFORE THEY BECOME PROBLEMS

Standard tests measure what's happening now. Epigenetics can show what's coming — sometimes years in advance.

Most medical tests are reactive. Epigenetic markers are different. Because methylation patterns reflect how your genes are currently operating, they can reveal biological dysfunction well before symptoms develop.

 

The Ummu team has published over 20 papers in DNA methylation science. By analysing methylation directly, Ummu provides insight into:

Biological ageing — how old your cells actually are

Cellular health — how efficiently your body is maintaining itself

Lifestyle impact on gene regulation — which habits are helping or hurting

"Many 'methylation tests' on the market are actually genotype tests. They analyse genetic variants like MTHFR but never measure the methylation marks themselves. That's the difference between estimating someone's weight by looking at them and measuring it with calibrated scales. UmmuAge directly measures DNA methylation levels." — Collins.

Why Women Need a Different Clock

EVERY OTHER Biological AGE TEST WAS BUILT ON THE WRONG DATA

Most epigenetic clocks were trained on populations that were majority male. That's not good enough for women — whose biology ages in a fundamentally different pattern.

The first generation of epigenetic clocks — including Horvath's landmark multi-tissue clock — were trained on mixed populations with no optimisation for female biology.  

 

Even more recently, the Collins et al. 2025 saliva clock (the direct scientific predecessor to UmmuAge) trained on 3,408 individuals — 68% of whom were male. That is the industry standard. Ummu was built to fix it.

 

Ummu's research shows that men typically display faster but more stable epigenetic ageing, while women show larger fluctuations — particularly during the fertility window (ages 30–50) and post-menopause (60+). A clock trained on mixed data smooths over these differences entirely.  

 

Some of the specific genes tracked in UmmuAge — including FHL2, an androgen-responsive gene linked to ageing biology — show measurably different methylation patterns between males and females.

"If the biology of ageing differs between men and women, then measuring it with a generic model risks missing important signals."

A Female-Focused Epigenetic Clock

Our biological clock was trained using DNA methylation data from over 1,500 women — then independently validated on 8,436 women. No male data was used in training.

 

From thousands of epigenetic markers, we identified 41 specific DNA methylation sites that track biological ageing with the highest precision in saliva.

Tiny chemical tags attach to your DNA and act like dimmer switches — turning genes up, down, or completely off.

When tested, the clock achieved R² = 0.849 in the female population it was designed for — with a mean prediction error of ~3.5 years.

The Data Behind the Difference

Methylation TRAJECTORIES DIVERGE BY SEX

Ummu research shows that female methylation patterns diverge from male patterns — especially in the fertility window (30–50) and post-menopause (60+). A clock trained on mixed data blurs this signal entirely.
Methylation vs Age (12–90) Male Female 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 Age Methylation Female hypomethylation divergence, fertility danger zone Methylation vs Age (12–90), Female (blue) diverges from male (yellow to orange). Yellow = fertility window. Red = post menopause acceleration (60+).

What the yellow band shows: Ages 30–50 mark where female methylation diverges most sharply from male patterns — precisely the fertility window where most women seek answers. A mixed-sex clock fails here.

 

What the red band shows: Ages 60+ show post-menopause acceleration — another biologically female event that generic clocks smooth over entirely.

 

The female methylation trajectory is not a variation of the male trajectory. It is a fundamentally different biological signal. Which is why it requires a fundamentally different clock.

"If the biology of ageing differs between men and women, then measuring it with a generic model risks missing important signals."

Why Female-Specific Ageing Matters

Ageing IS NOT A SINGLE UNIVERSAL PROCESS

Biological ageing in women is shaped by five systems that behave differently from men — and most clocks ignore all five.

At the molecular level, biological ageing reflects the cumulative impact of:

Hormonal changes

Cellular repair processes

Immune system activity

Metabolic regulation

Environmental exposures

Many of these systems behave differently in women. Designing a clock around female biology — using genes like FHL2 that show sex-specific methylation patterns — allows these differences to be captured accurately, not averaged away.
YOUR BIOLOGICAL AGE

THE Ummu Age CLOCK

Your birthday tells you how many years you've been alive. UmmuAge tells you how well your body is actually ageing — and whether you're ahead or behind the calendar.

Chronological Age

What your passport says

42 years

Fixed number based on your date of birth. Cannot be changed.

Biological Age (UmmuAge)

What your cells say

39 years

3 years younger!

Dynamic number based on DNA methylation. Can be improved with lifestyle changes.
What Your UmmuAge Score Measures.

HeartAge

Cardiovascular health markers showing how your heart is aging compared to your chronological age

Cognitive Health

Brain-related methylation patterns that indicate cognitive aging and mental wellness

Metabolic Age

Metabolism and energy-related markers showing how efficiently your body processes nutrients

THE PROOF

HOW ACCURATE IS Ummuage ? THE DATA

R² = 0.849 means the clock explains 85% of the variation in biological age — comparable to much larger, blood-based clocks, and outperforming male cohorts in female-specific gene regions.

R² 0.849

Female cohort — explains ~85% of biological age variation

R² 0.775

Same clock on male cohort — 7 percentage points lower
Training set
1,521 women
Male test cohort
2,097 men
Female error (MAE)
~3.54 years
Male error (MAE)
~4.46 years
CpG sites
41 selected
Array
Illumina EPIC 850k

A shared CpG clock works for both sexes — but sex-specific calibration significantly improves accuracy in females. Fertility and menopause onset are better predicted from biological age than chronological age.

Predicted vs Actual Age (41 CpG Clock), Female (orange x) vs Male (blue x) vs Ideal Fit (red dashed). Female data points cluster tighter around the ideal line.

What Our Saliva Test Actually Measures

YOU SPIT. WE Read 41 TIMESTAMPS IN YOUR GENOME.

Your saliva contains DNA from multiple cell types. We extract it, measure methylation at 41 specific sites, and give you a biological age — plus four clinical readouts.

Saliva contains both epithelial cells and immune cells — meaning a single sample captures signals from multiple biological systems. Using advanced sequencing technology, the Ummu lab measures methylation patterns at thousands of genome locations, then focuses on the 41 sites that matter most for biological age.

Team Ummu are specialists in saliva DNA methylation.

FERTILITY

Your true biological fertility clock — not a population average.

RECOVERY

Immune and inflammation trajectory — catch warning signals early.

AGEING

Individual-level cellular ageing. Age is now change, not time.

PERFORMANCE

Recovery, periodisation, peak performance window identification.

The Research

Ummu Age : A FEMALE-SPECIFIC EPIGENETIC CLOCK

A third-generation DNA methylation clock designed on 41 CpG sites from saliva — by Christopher Collins (ORCID: 0000-0003-2850-1950)

1.objective

Develop a saliva-based epigenetic clock from a large array (850,000+) CpG sites trained on females and evaluate how well it predicts age in males.

Key questions:

Does a female trained model generalise to males?

Are there sex specific methylation differences at clock CpGs?

2.methodology

Cohorts

Female training cohort:

1,521 women

Are there sex-specific methylation differences at clock CpGs?

 Male test cohort:

2,097 men

Age range: 18-86 years

Data

DNA methylation measured using Illumina EPIC 850k array

Model

41 CpG sites selected from EWAS (p < 1×10⁻⁸)

Linear regression epigenetic clock trained in females

Validation

Applied without retraining to male cohort

3.Results/Findings

A shared CpG clock works for both sexes, but sex specific calibration improved accuracy in females.

Benefits:

Saliva methylation clock

Non-invasive sampling

Strong correlation with age

Potential use in biological age testing and personalised health

Female-specific genes showed differing age patterns to males (FHL2, ZAR1 etc.)

Female clock showed sensitivity to fertility, perimenopause and menopause

3.1.results - more accurate menopause onset timing

16 26 36 46 56 66 76 86 0 Premenopause 0.5 Early perimenopause 1 Perimenopause 2 Menopause Age (years) Menopause stage Chronological menopause Biological clock (UmmuAge)

UmmuAge shows variability in menopause onset with potential direct mechanisms of reversal, symptom dampening and interventional age reversal

4.consumer analysis

UmmuAge is retested on 5,450 females with an R2 of 0.9 in very healthy cohorts, acceleration in non healthy cohorts and differs based on gene pathway and actual age. Interventions including nutrition, diet, supplements, medications, exercise and lifestyle can impact UmmuAge

5.conclusion

High accuracy in females (R² ≈ 0.85) and strong performance in males (R² ≈ 0.78), with accuracy increasing to 0.9 in healthy female cohorts.

Sex-specific methylation differences contribute to prediction differences.

The only DNA methylation trained female-specific clock from saliva.

Female ageing differs compared to males with larger peaks and slow downs.

Fertility and menopause are better predicted from biological ageing compared with chronological age.

Methodology, cohorts (1,521 women / 2,097 men), accuracy results (Female R²=0.849 / Male R²=0.775), menopause onset timing chart, consumer analysis (R²=0.9 in healthy females), and five conclusions

FITNESS AND PERFORMANCE

Cortisol rhythm, muscle genetics, metabolic wiring.

UMMU FITNESS

Fertility & Reproduction

MTHFR, Reproductive Biological Age, your true fertility window.

UMMU FERTILITY

Longevity & Ageing

UmmuAge trajectory. Age is now change, not time.

UMMU LONGEVITY

Beyond UmmuAge

FIVE Epigenetic Test. ONE SALIVA SAMPLE.

Your Ummu subscription includes UmmuAge plus four organ-specific age clocks, an Epi-Vitality resilience test, MethylGuard injury prediction, and full DNA genotyping — all from a single spit.

Epigenetic Age Clock

5 Biological Age Tests

In addition to UmmuAge, Ummu includes four organ-specific epigenetic age clocks — all based on true biological DNA methylation testing.

❤️ Heart Age
🧠 Memory / Brain Age
👂 Hearing Age
👁️ Eye Age

epi-vitality

The Epi-Vitality Test

Your Ummu subscription includes UmmuAge plus four organ-specific age clocks, an Epi-Vitality resilience test, MethylGuard injury prediction, and full DNA genotyping — all from a single spit.

Analyses DNA methylation at three specific CpG sites — calculating a composite Epi-Vitality Index. The genes relate to immune signalling (RNASEH2C / cGAS-STING), DNA repair, and stress biology.

Post-Menopause Cohort — High Scorers Showed (all p<0.001):

Lower subjective hot flushes
p<0.001
Thicker hair (subjective)
p<0.001
Superior memory (tested & subjective)
p<0.001
Stronger bones (BMD)
p<0.001
Superior cholesterol levels
p<0.001
Superior muscle power / handgrip
p<0.001

METHYLGUARD

Injury Prediction Before the Injury

Predicts overtraining and injury risk at a cellular level — before pain or fatigue begin.

An inflammatory epigenetic analysis test that understands female athletic biology. MethylGuard predicts overtraining before pain, strains, or fatigue appear.

the data

dna genotyping

Why Single-Gene Tests Are Misleading — and What Ummu Does Instead

Looking at one gene variant (like MTHFR) explains less than 0.1% of the genetic picture. Ummu uses polygenic scores — combining thousands of variants for real predictive power.

1. Most traits are polygenic

Heart disease, diabetes, obesity, height, athletic ability and mental health risk are all influenced by thousands of variants. A single SNP typically explains <0.1% of variance.

2. Aggregates small effects

Each SNP contributes a tiny weighted effect. Summing thousands of signals captures cumulative genetic risk — dramatically increasing predictive power.

3. Single SNPs are misleading

One MTHFR variant may increase disease risk by 5% — but other SNPs reduce it, gene-gene interactions exist, and the environment matters. PRS corrects this.

4. Better prediction accuracy

For height, PRS explains ~40% of genetic variance. For coronary artery disease, PRS identifies people with 3–5× higher risk.

5. Enables stratification

PRS places individuals into population percentiles: top 5% risk, average risk, protective genetics — enabling early prevention.

6. Captures hidden heritability

Traditional SNP-by-SNP testing misses most genetic contribution. PRS recovers this through sub-threshold variants that are weak alone but collectively meaningful.
SIMPLE ANALOGY · PREDICTING EXAM RESULTS BY...
Single SNP
One homework score
Single gene
One subject
Polygenic score
Every assignment, test and project combined, the full picture.
APPROACH
VARIANCE EXPLAINED
Single SNP
<0.1%
Single gene
1–5% (rare cases)
Polygenic score
10–40%+ depending on trait
TRAITS UMMU SCORES POLYGENICALLY:
Heart disease Diabetes Obesity Height Athletic ability Mental health risk Intelligence

How Ummu Compares

THE ONLY Female -TRAINED SALIVA CLOCK

Seven biological age methods compared across six clinical criteria. UmmuAge is the only method that is both female-trained and saliva-based — with loci linked to hormone and ageing pathways.
Clock / Method Type Female-Trained Epigenetic Biological Ageing Predicts Age from DNA Hormone / Ageing Loci Pace of Ageing
UmmuAge (Collins) Saliva DNAm ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Yes
10-CpG Saliva Clock (Collins et al.) Saliva DNAm ✗ No ✓ Yes ✓ Yes Limited ✗ No
Horvath Pan-Tissue Clock Multi-tissue DNAm ✗ No ✓ Yes ✓ Yes Mixed ✗ No
Pace-of-Ageing Clocks Blood DNAm ✗ No Rate only ✗ No Mixed ✓ Yes
Wearable "Biological Age" Device metrics ✗ No ✗ No ✗ No ✗ No ✗ No
MuhdoAge Saliva DNAm ✗ No ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✓ Yes ✗ No
GlycanAge Blood glycomics ✗ No Immune ageing Weak Limited ✗ No

Published Research

THE Science IS VERIFIABLE. EVERY CLAIM HAS A CITATION

2025
A Cost-Effective Saliva-Based Human Epigenetic Clock Using 10 CpG Sites Identified with the Illumina EPIC 850k Array
Collins, C.; Brown, J.; Chung, H.C. · DNA 2025, 5, 28
View Research ↗
2025
Creatine Monohydrate Use Is Associated with Performance Enhancing DNA Methylation Patterns
Collins, C. & Puras, A. · SportRxiv, 2025
View Research ↗
2025
High Intensity Resistance Training Is Associated with Epigenetic Reprogramming & Distinct Salivary DNA Methylation Patterns
Collins, C. & Puras, A. · SportRxiv, 2025
View Research ↗
2025
Genetic Predisposition vs. Performance Enhancing Drug Use and Fat Free Mass Index in Strength Trained Men
Collins, C. & Puras, A. · SportRxiv, 2025
View Research ↗
2025
DNA Methylation Signatures Diverge Between Endurance and Resistance Training Modalities
Collins, C. · ResearchHub, 2025
View Research ↗
2026
High Intensity Exercise and Sport Type Are Associated with Lower Epigenetic Biological Age in Middle Aged Men
C. Collins · SportRxiv, 2026
View Research ↗
2024
A Randomised, Double Blind, Placebo Controlled, Cross Over Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Biological Effects and Safety of a Polyphenol Supplement on Healthy Ageing
Chong, J.R.; de Lucia, C.; Tovar Rios, D.A.; Collins, C. et al. · Antioxidants 2024, 13, 995
View Research ↗
2023
Responsiveness to Endurance Training Can Be Partly Explained by the Number of Favourable Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms an Individual Possesses
Chung, H.; Keiller, D.; Swain, P.; Roberts, J.; Gordon, D. · PLOS ONE, 2023
View Research ↗
2022
Born Equal: Can Genetics Make the Perfect Athlete
Collins, C. & Heasman, A. · SportRxiv, 2022
View Research ↗
2018
Can Genetics Predict Sports Injury? The Association of the Genes GDF5, AMPD1, COL5A1 and IGF2 on Soccer Player Injury Occurrence
McCabe, K.; Collins, C. · Sports 2018, 6, 21
View Research ↗
2018
The Impact of a Reduced Calorie, Macronutrient Diet Change on Caucasian Males in Relation to Genotypes Associated with Obesity, Increased BMI and Dietary Response
L. Ellis & Collins, C. · bioRxiv, 2018
View Research ↗

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