High school reunions often highlight how differently people age. Some individuals remain mentally sharp and physically active well into their later years, while others begin to experience frailty or memory decline much sooner than anticipated.
“The way we age biologically doesn’t always match our chronological age,” said Ahmad Hariri, a psychology and neuroscience professor at Duke University.
Now, researchers from Duke, Harvard, and the University of Otago in New Zealand have created a free tool that uses a single brain scan to assess how quickly a person is aging—even while they’re still in good health.
A Single MRI Can Reveal Hidden Midlife Health Risks, Offering a Chance for Early Prevention
Their findings, published in Nature Aging, show that this tool can use one MRI scan to estimate midlife risk for chronic illnesses that often don’t surface until later in life. This early insight could encourage healthier lifestyle and diet choices.
In older adults, the tool may also predict the onset of dementia and other age-related conditions years before symptoms appear—offering a better chance to intervene early and slow disease progression.
“What’s exciting is that we’ve measured how quickly people are aging using data from midlife,” Hariri said. “And it’s allowing us to forecast dementia diagnoses in individuals many years older.”
Slowing age-related decline is key to healthier, longer lives—but first, we need a reliable way to measure aging, said Ahmad Hariri.
Unlike Traditional Aging Clocks, This Tool Tracks Biological Aging Over Time Without Generational Bias
Many existing “aging clocks” rely on single-time-point data from people of different ages, which can be skewed by generational exposures like lead or smoking. The real challenge is measuring biological aging over time, free from such biases.
To solve this, researchers used the Dunedin Study, which has tracked over 1,000 people born in New Zealand in the early 1970s. By monitoring various health indicators across two decades, they created a score for each person’s rate of biological aging.
They then developed a tool called DunedinPACE Neuroimaging (DunedinPACNI) that uses just one brain MRI to estimate this rate. Trained on scans from 860 participants at age 45, the tool was later validated using brain imaging data from the U.K., U.S., Canada, and Latin America.
Researchers found that people aging faster, according to the tool, scored lower on cognitive tests and had quicker hippocampal shrinkage—key to memory.
In a study of 624 adults aged 52–89, fast agers were 60% more likely to develop dementia and showed earlier signs of cognitive decline.
“When we saw the results, our jaws hit the floor,” said Hariri.
Faster Brain Aging Linked to Higher Risk of Chronic Illness and Early Death, Study Finds
The study found that people with higher DunedinPACNI scores—indicating faster aging—were more likely to experience overall health decline, including frailty, heart disease, stroke, and lung conditions. These individuals were 18% more likely to develop chronic illness and 40% more likely to die in the following years.
“There’s a strong connection between how the brain and body age,” said Ahmad Hariri.
The tool proved accurate across diverse populations, including Latin American and low-income or non-white groups in the UK, suggesting it captures a universal aspect of brain aging.
As the global population ages—with nearly a quarter expected to be over 65 by 2050—the burden of chronic diseases like dementia is growing. Alzheimer’s care alone may soar to over $9 trillion by mid-century.
Because current treatments come too late to reverse damage, early detection is critical. DunedinPACNI could help identify at-risk individuals sooner and evaluate treatments more effectively.
It may also shed light on how risk factors like poor sleep or mental health influence aging, said lead author Ethan Whitman. Though not yet ready for clinical use, the team hopes the tool will advance aging research beyond blood-based biomarkers.
“We believe this tool can play a major role in predicting and tracking age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s,” Hariri said. A patent application has been filed.
Read the original article on: Medical Xpress
Read more: Your Brain Gives Off a Hidden Glow and Scientists Are Working to Decode It