The researchers trained an artificial intelligence model to measure people’s ages by scanning their brains
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An abundance of 13 proteins in your blood appears to be a strong indicator of how your brain is aging. This suggests that blood tests could one day help people track the brain and even boost it the health.
Most previous studies that have looked at protein markers of brain aging have involved blood Less than 1000 peoplehe says Nicholas Seyfried at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who was not involved in the new study.
For a broader idea of the effect of these proteins, Wei-Shi Liu At China’s Fudan University and colleagues from the UK Biobank project, they analyzed MRI brain scan data from almost 11,000 adults aged between 50 and 80 at the time of imaging.
Using data from 70 percent of participants, Liu’s team trained an artificial intelligence The model predicted how old the participants were based on features in the brain images, such as the size of different brain regions and how different parts are connected to each other. When the model was applied to the remaining 30 percent of participants, its predictions were accurate to within 2.7 years of their actual ages.
Next, the researchers used the model to predict the age of a separate group of nearly 4,700 people, with an average age of 63, who also had their brains imaged for the UK Biobank. The team calculated the difference between the actual ages of these participants and those predicted by the AI, which is called the brain age range “The higher the age predicted by the AI compared to the actual age, the faster their brain ages,” says Liu.
This group also gave the blood the samples were imaged in their brains at the same time. From this, the team identified eight proteins that appeared to be significantly increased, and five that appeared to be less abundant, with increasing brain age.
In an analysis of data from previous studies, the researchers confirmed that the proteins are produced by brain cells and that their levels can affect risk. dementia and stroke
This suggests that blood tests for these proteins can indicate how big someone’s brain is getting old. “These markers could be the canary in the coal mine to say, ‘hey, look, let’s start intervening now while you have enough time to slow the aging of your brain,'” says Seyfried.
But for this to be useful, we need to know that these proteins can be changed by lifestyle changes. “You’re like, ‘If you run that much, lose that weight, change your diet, (then) you can change those levels back to normal,'” Seyfried says.
The study was mostly white and affluent, so more research is needed to see if the results apply to other populations of diverse ethnicities and income levels, Seyfried says.
The team now hopes to conduct research in animals to determine how the 13 proteins affect the brain. For example, researchers can demonstrate whether disruptions in these proteins affect cognition or the development of neurodegenerative conditions, Liu says. “In the coming decades, this could open up ways to target proteins to slow aging and disease.”
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