Assessment reveals cardiovascular risk factors influence cerebrovascular brain age across ethnic groups, suggesting implications for cognitive decline.
Motivation: Accelerated structural and cerebrovascular brain ageing is associated with cognitive decline. However, it is unknown how cardiovascular risk factors (CRF), differing between ethnicities and associated with structural and vascular brain health, are related to accelerated brain ageing. Goal(s): To assess the associations of CRF with structural and cerebrovascular brain ageing, in three ethnic groups. Approach: Accelerated brain ageing was assessed by determining the difference in chronological and T1w, FLAIR, and Arterial Spin Labelling-derived brain age using machine learning. Results: Cerebrovascular — but not structural — brain age was associated with several CRF. There were no ethnicity interactions. Impact: Multi-modal brain age assessments may enable a better understanding of the effects of ageing-related pathology, such as CRF, on the brain. This allows future brain ageing studies to investigate structural and cerebrovascular components of cognitive decline and cerebral pathology.
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Dijsselhof et al. (2025) studied this question.
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