inflammaging does not simply reflect increases in proinflammatory markers many biodemographic studies use biomarkers of inflammation to understand or predict chronic disease and aging inflammaging ie chronic lowgrade inflammation during aging is commonly characterized by proinflammatory biomarkers however most studies use just one marker at a time sometimes leading to conflicting results due to complex interactions among the markers a multidimensional approach allows a more robust interpretation of the various relationships between the markers we applied principal component analysis pca to 19 inflammatory biomarkers from the inchianti study we identified a clear stable structure among the markers with the first axis explaining inflammatory activation both pro and antiinflammatory markers loaded strongly and positively and the second axis innate immune response the first but not the second axis was strongly correlated with age r056 p00001 r008 p0053 and both were strongly predictive of mortality hazard ratios per pca unit 95 ci 133 116153 and 087 076098 respectively and multiple chronic diseases but in opposite directions both axes were more predictive than any individual markers for baseline chronic diseases and mortality these results show that pca can uncover a novel biological structure in the relationships among inflammatory markers and that key axes of this structure play important roles in chronic disease