Getting older is inevitable — but illness doesn’t must be.
Scientists have developed a groundbreaking tool that may measure how briskly an individual is aging and predict their future risk of chronic diseases like dementia using a single brain MRI scan.
Researchers say this early warning could give people the prospect to make lifestyle changes while they’re still young and healthy enough to potentially slow and even prevent health problems down the road.
The technology is the brainchild of scientists at Duke, Harvard and Latest Zealand’s University of Otago, who used data from the Dunedin Study — a decades-long health project tracking over 1,000 Latest Zealanders born within the early ’70s.
Since birth, participants have been poked, scanned and tested frequently. Researchers have followed every part from their blood pressure and cholesterol to lung and kidney function to map how their bodies have modified over time.
From that mountain of knowledge, the team crunched the numbers to see how briskly everyone was aging biologically — not based on their birthdate, but on the physical wear and tear their body had endured.
Then they trained the tool, called DunedinPACNI, to predict those biological ages using only a single MRI scan of the brain that was taken when participants were 45 years old.
Next, they put the tool to the test, using it to research brain scans from people across the US, UK, Canada and Latin America.
Across the board, they found that individuals with higher aging scores performed worse on cognitive tests and showed faster shrinkage within the hippocampus, the a part of the brain crucial for memory and learning.
In a single evaluation, those that the tool deemed to be aging fastest faced a 60% higher risk of developing dementia in comparison with individuals with lower scores. In addition they began to have memory and considering problems sooner.
When the team first saw the outcomes, “our jaws just dropped to the ground,” Ahmad Hariri, a Duke professor of psychology and neuroscience, said in a press release.
“What’s really cool about that is that we’ve captured how briskly persons are aging using data collected in midlife,” he noted. “It’s helping us predict diagnosis of dementia amongst people who find themselves much older.”
Brain decline wasn’t the one red flag the tool picked up.
Individuals with higher DunedinPACNI scores were also more more likely to suffer from age-related frailty, heart attacks, strokes, lung disease and other chronic illnesses.
Much more striking, they were 40% more more likely to die inside the following several years than their slower-aging peers.
Notably, the tool’s accuracy held up across race, income and geographic location.
“It appears to be capturing something that’s reflected in all brains,” Hariri said.
A ticking clock
The brand new tool arrives as persons are living longer than ever. By 2050, nearly 1 / 4 of the worldwide population will likely be over 65 — twice as many seniors as today, in accordance with the World Health Organization.
An extended life sometimes comes with a catch.
“More persons are unfortunately going to experience chronic age-related diseases, including dementia,” Hariri said.
Studies predict 152.8 million people worldwide will likely be living with dementia in 25 years — up from 57.4 million cases in 2019.
Despite this sharp rise, effective treatments for Alzheimer’s and other dementias remain elusive. Most drugs available on the market may also help manage symptoms, but fail to stop or reverse the disease.
One reason existing treatments haven’t worked, Hariri theorized, is that they often start too late — after the disease has already done an excessive amount of damage.
“Drugs can’t resurrect a dying brain,” he said.
But the brand new tool could change that by identifying people prone to Alzheimer’s earlier, allowing for interventions before extensive brain damage occurs.
Beyond just predicting dementia risk, the brand new clock will help scientists work out why individuals with certain risk aspects — like poor sleep or mental health issues — age in another way, said Ethan Whitman, first writer on the study and a clinical psychology PhD candidate at Duke.
Nonetheless, more work is required to show DunedinPACNI right into a tool that on a regular basis healthcare providers can use.
“We want to develop normative reference charts for DunedinPACNI, as have been done for height, weight, BMI, etc.,” Hariri told The Post.
“We’ve begun to do that, but it’s going to take time to amass the tens of hundreds of scans collected across the lifespan obligatory.”
Getting older is inevitable — but illness doesn’t must be.
Scientists have developed a groundbreaking tool that may measure how briskly an individual is aging and predict their future risk of chronic diseases like dementia using a single brain MRI scan.
Researchers say this early warning could give people the prospect to make lifestyle changes while they’re still young and healthy enough to potentially slow and even prevent health problems down the road.
The technology is the brainchild of scientists at Duke, Harvard and Latest Zealand’s University of Otago, who used data from the Dunedin Study — a decades-long health project tracking over 1,000 Latest Zealanders born within the early ’70s.
Since birth, participants have been poked, scanned and tested frequently. Researchers have followed every part from their blood pressure and cholesterol to lung and kidney function to map how their bodies have modified over time.
From that mountain of knowledge, the team crunched the numbers to see how briskly everyone was aging biologically — not based on their birthdate, but on the physical wear and tear their body had endured.
Then they trained the tool, called DunedinPACNI, to predict those biological ages using only a single MRI scan of the brain that was taken when participants were 45 years old.
Next, they put the tool to the test, using it to research brain scans from people across the US, UK, Canada and Latin America.
Across the board, they found that individuals with higher aging scores performed worse on cognitive tests and showed faster shrinkage within the hippocampus, the a part of the brain crucial for memory and learning.
In a single evaluation, those that the tool deemed to be aging fastest faced a 60% higher risk of developing dementia in comparison with individuals with lower scores. In addition they began to have memory and considering problems sooner.
When the team first saw the outcomes, “our jaws just dropped to the ground,” Ahmad Hariri, a Duke professor of psychology and neuroscience, said in a press release.
“What’s really cool about that is that we’ve captured how briskly persons are aging using data collected in midlife,” he noted. “It’s helping us predict diagnosis of dementia amongst people who find themselves much older.”
Brain decline wasn’t the one red flag the tool picked up.
Individuals with higher DunedinPACNI scores were also more more likely to suffer from age-related frailty, heart attacks, strokes, lung disease and other chronic illnesses.
Much more striking, they were 40% more more likely to die inside the following several years than their slower-aging peers.
Notably, the tool’s accuracy held up across race, income and geographic location.
“It appears to be capturing something that’s reflected in all brains,” Hariri said.
A ticking clock
The brand new tool arrives as persons are living longer than ever. By 2050, nearly 1 / 4 of the worldwide population will likely be over 65 — twice as many seniors as today, in accordance with the World Health Organization.
An extended life sometimes comes with a catch.
“More persons are unfortunately going to experience chronic age-related diseases, including dementia,” Hariri said.
Studies predict 152.8 million people worldwide will likely be living with dementia in 25 years — up from 57.4 million cases in 2019.
Despite this sharp rise, effective treatments for Alzheimer’s and other dementias remain elusive. Most drugs available on the market may also help manage symptoms, but fail to stop or reverse the disease.
One reason existing treatments haven’t worked, Hariri theorized, is that they often start too late — after the disease has already done an excessive amount of damage.
“Drugs can’t resurrect a dying brain,” he said.
But the brand new tool could change that by identifying people prone to Alzheimer’s earlier, allowing for interventions before extensive brain damage occurs.
Beyond just predicting dementia risk, the brand new clock will help scientists work out why individuals with certain risk aspects — like poor sleep or mental health issues — age in another way, said Ethan Whitman, first writer on the study and a clinical psychology PhD candidate at Duke.
Nonetheless, more work is required to show DunedinPACNI right into a tool that on a regular basis healthcare providers can use.
“We want to develop normative reference charts for DunedinPACNI, as have been done for height, weight, BMI, etc.,” Hariri told The Post.
“We’ve begun to do that, but it’s going to take time to amass the tens of hundreds of scans collected across the lifespan obligatory.”
