A study of 52,198 people linked certain conditions to faster brain aging. ADHD wasn’t one of them

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A study of 52,198 people linked certain conditions to faster brain aging. ADHD wasn’t one of them

Researchers analyzed thousands of brain scans to see how different conditions influenced someone’s predictive age difference.

A massive new study just found which disorders are linked to faster brain aging. 

The MRI study suggests that different neurological and psychiatric conditions may leave distinct signs of accelerated aging.

The study, published in the peer-reviewed open-access journal PLOS Medicine, found that those with dementia, mild cognitive impairment, alcohol addiction, and psychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia showed signs of accelerated brain aging.

How scientists measure a brain’s biological age

Researchers estimate whether a person’s brain appears older or younger than expected for their chronological age using a technique called predictive age difference, or PAD.

PAD compares a person’s actual age with the age estimated from brain imaging. A positive PAD means the brain appears older than expected.

To see how the different brain conditions influenced the measure, researchers at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in China analyzed MRI data from 49,500 control participants drawn from several different brain-imaging databases. They compared those scans with data from 2,698 people with a range of conditions: ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, alcohol or tobacco addiction, Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or major depressive disorder.

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The disorders most strongly linked to faster brain aging

Among the eight conditions examined, Alzheimer’s and mild cognitive impairment showed the strongest associations with higher PAD measures, suggesting that they were associated with the greatest degree of accelerated brain aging. Addiction and psychiatric disorders were also associated with an increased PAD.

However, those with ADHD or autism spectrum disorder did not have significantly different PAD scores compared with the control group.

Different disorders leave different patterns in the brain

For the study, the researchers also examined PAD across different brain regions to see the patterns of gene expression associated with each of the different conditions. One region that especially stood out was the prefrontal cortex, which showed higher PAD scores across multiple brain disorders. 

Dementia was associated with higher PAD scores in the frontal and occipital cortex. Psychiatric disorders were associated with higher scores in the frontal and temporal lobes. However, addiction had a different pattern entirely, showing a higher PAD score was shown in the default mode network, salience network, putamen, and thalamus. 

Because the study was purely correlational, these findings do not show that the conditions in question directly cause accelerated brain aging. Additionally, many of these conditions, especially psychiatric ones, frequently occur together, which can make their individual effects difficult to discern. 

However, these findings suggest that studying PAD more closely could help research identify additional biomarkers associated with common brain disorders.

This post originally appeared at inc.com.

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