Background: Many common neurological disorders are associated with advancing chronological age, but their association with biological age (BA) remains poorly understood.
Methods: We studied 325 870 participants in the UK Biobank without a diagnosed neurological condition at baseline and generated three previously-described measures of BA based on 18 routinely measured clinical biomarkers (PhenoAge, Klemera-Doubal method age (KDMAge), homeostatic dysregulation age). Using survival models, we assessed the effect of advanced BA on incident neurological diagnoses, including all-cause and cause-specific dementia, ischaemic stroke, Parkinson's disease and motor neuron disease.
Results: During a mean follow-up of 9.0 years, there were 1397 incident cases of dementia and 2515 of ischaemic stroke, with smaller case numbers of other diagnoses. The strongest associations with a 1 SD in BA residual were seen for all-cause dementia (KDMAge HR=1.19, 95% CI=1.11 to 1.26), vascular dementia (1.41, 1.25 to 1.60) and ischaemic stroke (1.39, 1.34 to 1.46). Weaker associations were seen for Alzheimer's disease and motor neuron disease, while, in contrast, HRs for Parkinson's disease tended to be <1. Results were largely consistent after adjustment for disease-specific covariates including common cardiometabolic risk factors.
Conclusions: Advanced BA calculated from routine clinical biomarker results increases the risk of subsequent neurological diagnoses including all-cause dementia and ischaemic stroke.
Keywords: ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE; MOTOR NEURON DISEASE; PARKINSON'S DISEASE; STROKE; VASCULAR DEMENTIA.
© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.