Petersen Marvin, Link Moritz A, Mayer Carola, Nägele Felix L, Schell Maximilian, Fiehler Jens, Gallinat Jürgen, Kühn Simone, Twerenbold Raphael, Omidvarnia Amir, Hoffstaedter Felix, Patil Kaustubh R, Eickhoff Simon B, Thomalla Götz, Cheng Bastian
Department of Neurology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Neuroradiology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany.
medRxiv. 2024 Jul 24:2024.07.24.24310926. doi: 10.1101/2024.07.24.24310926.
The increasing global life expectancy brings forth challenges associated with age-related cognitive and motor declines. To better understand underlying mechanisms, we investigated the connection between markers of biological brain aging based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), cognitive and motor performance, as well as modifiable vascular risk factors, using a large-scale neuroimaging analysis in 40,579 individuals of the population-based UK Biobank and Hamburg City Health Study. Employing partial least squares correlation analysis (PLS), we investigated multivariate associative effects between three imaging markers of biological brain aging - relative brain age, white matter hyperintensities of presumed vascular origin, and peak-width of skeletonized mean diffusivity - and multi-domain cognitive test performances and motor test results. The PLS identified a latent dimension linking higher markers of biological brain aging to poorer cognitive and motor performances, accounting for 94.7% of shared variance. Furthermore, a mediation analysis revealed that biological brain aging mediated the relationship of vascular risk factors - including hypertension, glucose, obesity, and smoking - to cognitive and motor function. These results were replicable in both cohorts. By integrating multi-domain data with a comprehensive methodological approach, our study contributes evidence of a direct association between vascular health, biological brain aging, and functional cognitive as well as motor performance, emphasizing the need for early and targeted preventive strategies to maintain cognitive and motor independence in aging populations.
全球预期寿命的不断增加带来了与年龄相关的认知和运动能力下降相关的挑战。为了更好地理解潜在机制，我们在基于人群的英国生物银行和汉堡市健康研究的40579名个体中，通过大规模神经影像学分析，研究了基于磁共振成像（MRI）的生物脑老化标志物、认知和运动表现以及可改变的血管危险因素之间的联系。我们采用偏最小二乘相关分析（PLS），研究了生物脑老化的三个成像标志物——相对脑年龄、假定血管源性白质高信号和骨架化平均扩散率峰值宽度——与多领域认知测试表现和运动测试结果之间的多变量关联效应。PLS确定了一个潜在维度，将生物脑老化的较高标志物与较差的认知和运动表现联系起来，解释了94.7%的共享方差。此外，中介分析表明，生物脑老化介导了血管危险因素——包括高血压、血糖、肥胖和吸烟——与认知和运动功能之间的关系。这些结果在两个队列中均可重复。通过采用综合方法整合多领域数据，我们的研究为血管健康、生物脑老化与功能性认知及运动表现之间的直接关联提供了证据，强调了在老年人群中需要早期和有针对性的预防策略以维持认知和运动独立性。
