
Age-associated disease and disability are placing a growing burden on society. However, ageing does not affect people uniformly. Hence, markers of the underlying biological ageing process are needed to help identify people at increased risk of age-associated physical and cognitive impairments and ultimately, death. Here, we present such a biomarker, 'brain-predicted age', derived using structural neuroimaging. Brain-predicted age was calculated using machine-learning analysis, trained on neuroimaging data from a large healthy reference sample (N=2001), then tested in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (N=669), to determine relationships with age-associated functional measures and mortality. Having a brain-predicted age indicative of an older-appearing brain was associated with: weaker grip strength, poorer lung function, slower walking speed, lower fluid intelligence, higher allostatic load and increased mortality risk. Furthermore, while combining brain-predicted age with grey matter and cerebrospinal fluid volumes (themselves strong predictors) not did improve mortality risk prediction, the combination of brain-predicted age and DNA-methylation-predicted age did. This indicates that neuroimaging and epigenetics measures of ageing can provide complementary data regarding health outcomes. Our study introduces a clinically-relevant neuroimaging ageing biomarker and demonstrates that combining distinct measurements of biological ageing further helps to determine risk of age-related deterioration and death.
Adult, Epigenomics, Male, Aging, Allostatic Load, Follow-Up, Population, 2804 Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, 610, Neuroimaging, Predictive markers, Epigenesis, Genetic, 17 Psychology And Cognitive Sciences, Machine Learning, Cognition, 2738 Psychiatry and Mental health, 1312 Molecular Biology, Genetics, Journal Article, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Lothian Birth Cohort, Later Life, Alzheimers-Disease, Aged, Psychiatry, Aged, 80 and over, Brain, 11 Medical And Health Sciences, Grip Strength, 06 Biological Sciences, Middle Aged, Biological Risk, Old-Age, Original Article, Female, Epigenetic Clock, Biomarkers, Neuroscience
Adult, Epigenomics, Male, Aging, Allostatic Load, Follow-Up, Population, 2804 Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience, 610, Neuroimaging, Predictive markers, Epigenesis, Genetic, 17 Psychology And Cognitive Sciences, Machine Learning, Cognition, 2738 Psychiatry and Mental health, 1312 Molecular Biology, Genetics, Journal Article, Humans, Longitudinal Studies, Lothian Birth Cohort, Later Life, Alzheimers-Disease, Aged, Psychiatry, Aged, 80 and over, Brain, 11 Medical And Health Sciences, Grip Strength, 06 Biological Sciences, Middle Aged, Biological Risk, Old-Age, Original Article, Female, Epigenetic Clock, Biomarkers, Neuroscience
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