Pandora’s Box

Can we tell how fast we are ageing?T he subject has been of interest to both the scientific and consumer worlds, and various blood indices have been studied for some time.A recently published study from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, USA, carried out brain magnetic resonance imaging scans of 1000 people, born in Dunedin, New Zealand, from April 1972 to March 1973, who had periodically undergone various assessments as they were growing up.The authors used 860 brain images and examined correlations with participants' age-related decline in cardiovascular, metabolic and immune function and other physiological measures.They produced a new 'ageing clock' and found that higher scores were correlated with greater risk of future chronic disease and death.Notably, the ageing clock showed the same results when the researchers used images from the UK Biobank (42 583 participants) and the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (1737 participants).The authors recognise that a lot more data in more populations and different age groups are needed to test how to harmonise data from different types of scanner before the clock can be considered for use in clinical settings.In the meantime, they are also interested in whether conditions such as schizophrenia or sleep disorders maybe associated with accelerated ageing.