Brain age predicts mortality

• DOI: 10.1038/mp.2017.62
• Publication Date: 2017-04-25T08:33:14Z
• Authors: J H Cole; S J Ritchie; M E Bastin; M C Valdés Hernández; S Muñoz Maniega; N Royle; J Corley; A Pattie; S E Harris; Q Zhang; N R Wray; P Redmond; R E Marioni; J M Starr; S R Cox; J M Wardlaw; D J Sharp; I J Deary
• Keywords: Allostatic load; Brain Aging; Cognitive Decline

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 process needed to help identify at increased risk age-associated physical cognitive impairments ultimately, death. Here, we present such biomarker, 'brain-predicted age', derived using structural neuroimaging. Brain-predicted age was calculated machine-learning analysis, trained neuroimaging data from large healthy reference sample (N=2001), then tested in Lothian Birth Cohort 1936 (N=669), determine relationships with functional measures mortality. Having brain-predicted indicative an older-appearing brain associated with: weaker grip strength, poorer lung function, slower walking speed, lower fluid intelligence, higher allostatic load mortality risk. Furthermore, while combining grey matter cerebrospinal volumes (themselves strong predictors) did improve prediction, combination DNA-methylation-predicted did. This indicates that epigenetics can provide complementary regarding health outcomes. Our study introduces clinically-relevant biomarker demonstrates distinct measurements further helps age-related deterioration