Cumplido-Mayoral, IreneOperto, GrégoryFalcón, CarlesShekari, MahnazCacciaglia, RaffaeleMilà Alomà, MartaMinguillón, CarolinaSuárez-Calvet, MarcGispert López, Juan DomingoOASIS study2024-03-012024-03-012023Cumplido-Mayoral I, García-Prat M, Operto G, Falcon C, Shekari M et al. Biological brain age prediction using machine learning on structural neuroimaging data: Multi-cohort validation against biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease and neurodegeneration stratified by sex. Elife. 2023 Apr 17;12:e81067. DOI: 10.7554/eLife.810672050-084Xhttp://hdl.handle.net/10230/59299Brain-age can be inferred from structural neuroimaging and compared to chronological age (brain-age delta) as a marker of biological brain aging. Accelerated aging has been found in neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer's disease (AD), but its validation against markers of neurodegeneration and AD is lacking. Here, imaging-derived measures from the UK Biobank dataset (N=22,661) were used to predict brain-age in 2,314 cognitively unimpaired (CU) individuals at higher risk of AD and mild cognitive impaired (MCI) patients from four independent cohorts with available biomarker data: ALFA+, ADNI, EPAD, and OASIS. Brain-age delta was associated with abnormal amyloid-β, more advanced stages (AT) of AD pathology and APOE-ε4 status. Brain-age delta was positively associated with plasma neurofilament light, a marker of neurodegeneration, and sex differences in the brain effects of this marker were found. These results validate brain-age delta as a non-invasive marker of biological brain aging in non-demented individuals with abnormal levels of biomarkers of AD and axonal injury.application/pdfeng© 2023, Cumplido-Mayoral et al. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.81067Alzheimer's diseaseBrain age predictionHumanMedicineNeuroimagingNeuroscienceinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess