A fast, non-invasive scan of the retina, the light-sensitive nerve tissue layers at the back of the eye, could one day help doctors to identify people who are aging faster and who are at higher risk of premature mortality, according to research published online in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.
Biological age vs. chronological age
The study, the first of its kind, according to the researchers, could be used as a detection tool “of age in the retina” and thus determine the true age biology of our body, which may or may not reflect our chronological age; the fact that two people have the same number of years does not mean that they physically deteriorate at the same rate.
Now a deep learning model has been taught, a form of learning automatic and artificial intelligence (AI), to predict the years of a person’s life simply by looking at their retina.
According to the results of the study, the algorithm was able to predict the retinal age and the real age of almost 47,000 adults among the 40 and the 54 years, all of them belonging to the UK Biobank, with an overall accuracy of 3.5 years.
“People who age fast”
A little over a decade after these retinas were scanned, 1,871 (5%) individuals had died –321 (17%) of cardiovascular diseases ascular; one,018 (54,5%) of cancer; and 532 (28,5% ) of other causes, including dementia–, and those with older-looking retinas, “fast-aging people,” were more likely to belong to this group.
For example, if the algorithm predicted that a person’s retina was one year older than their actual age, their risk of dying from any cause in the following 000 years increased by 2%. At the same time, the risk of death from a cause other than cardiovascular disease or cancer increased 3%.
Unique “window” of underlying pathological processes
“The retina offers a ‘ accessible ‘window’ to assess the underlying pathological processes of systemic vascular and neurological diseases that are associated with increased mortality risk,” wrote study author Mingguang He, professor of ophthalmic epidemiology at the University of Melbourne and the University of Melbourne. Australian Eye Research Centre.
Despite promising correlations, the results are purely observational, meaning that it is not yet known what the that drives this relationship at the biological level.
Increasing scientific evidence
However, the results support growing evidence that the retina is highly sensitive to damage from aging. Previous studies have suggested that retinal images contain information on cardiovascular risk factors, chronic kidney diseases and systemic biomarkers, among others.
“Our novel findings have determined that the difference Retinal age is an independent predictor of increased mortality risk, especially non-medical mortality. / non-cancerous. These results suggest that retinal age may be a clinically significant biomarker of aging,” they said.
Other existing predictors of biological age are not as precise –in addition to being expensive, time-consuming and invasive– as the age difference of the retina seems to be, according to Science Alert. These include neuroimaging, the DNA methylation clock, and the transcriptome aging clock.
Thus, the new findings, combined with previous research , add weight to “the hypothesis that the retina plays an important role in the aging process and is sensitive to the accumulated damage of aging that increases the risk of mortality”, explain the authors of the study.
(With information from DW)
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