Advanced brain age in community-dwelling population with combined physical and cognitive impairments

We investigated whether advanced brain biological age is associated with accelerated age-related physical and/or cognitive functional decline: mobility impairment no disability (MIND), cognitive impairment no dementia (CIND) and physio-cognitive decline syndrome (PCDS). We constructed a brain-age prediction model using gray-matter features from the MRI of 1,482 healthy individuals (age: 18-92 years). Predicted and chronological age differences were obtained (brain-age-gap; BAG) and analyzed in another 1,193 community-dwelling population aged ≥ 50 years. Among the 1,193 participants, there were 501, 346, 148, and 198 in the robust, CIND, MIND, and PCDS groups, respectively. Participants with PCDS had significantly larger BAG (BAG = 2.99±8.97) than the robust (BAG = -0.49±9.27, p = 0.002; η2 = 0.014), CIND (BAG = 0.47±9.16, p = 0.02; η2 = 0.01), and MIND (BAG = 0.36±9.69, p = 0.036; η2 = 0.013) groups. Advanced brain aging is involved in the pathophysiology of the co-occurrence of physical and cognitive decline in the older people. The PCDS may be a clinical phenotype reflective of accelerated biological age in community-dwelling older individuals. Data supporting the present findings are available upon reasonable request.