"Retinal Age Gap" as Prediction of Aging and Mortality

Article: Your eyes hold the key to your true biological age
Source: CNN Health
Published: January 18, 2022
Article: Something in Your Eyes May Reveal if You're at Risk of Early Death
Source: ScienceAlert
Published: January 19, 2022
Article: Using AI to Assess Eye Scans, Scientists Find “Retinal Age Gap” Predicts Mortality Risk
Source: Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News
Published: January 19, 2022

The eyes are not only the windows to the expression of one's inner thoughts, but also an early indicator of systemic health, from cardiovascular to neurological diseases. Recently, an international team of investigators applied computer deep learning to retinal imaging to analyze the difference between people's biological age of their retinas and their chronological age since birth. The study comprised of data from the U.K. Biobank of 80,169 fundus images taken from 46,969 adults between 40 and 69 years of age; data from 35,917 of the participants were assessed over a period of 11 years (while data from other participants were used to validate the accuracy of the deep learning model used). Termed the "retinal age gap," the difference could be used as a screening tool for overall health and risk of mortality, which is notable given that biological age varies from one person to another and could be a more accurate representation of health status than chronological age. In particular, within a 3.5-year overall accuracy, the study found that each 1 year increase in the retinal age gap was associated with a 2% increase in risk of all-cause mortality and a 3% increase in risk of cause-specific mortality attributable to diseases other than cardiovascular disease or cancer. Furthermore, a large retinal age gap of up to 10 years was associated with up to 67% higher risk of mortality. The two diseases for which the model did not find any significant association were cardiovascular disease and cancer, which the researchers think could be due to the small sample size of cases in the study population and to improvements in heart and cancer treatments. A clinical spokesperson of the American Academy of Ophthalmology comments, "The really unique aspect of this paper is using that difference in a patient's real age compared to the age the computer thought a patient was to determine mortality. This is not something that we thought was possible." The study highlights that the retina is also sensitive to the effects of aging throughout the body, and thus could be a potential biomarker of aging and mortality risk, but has the advantage of being accessible for monitoring of health easily and affordably through optical imaging and computer deep learning.

My rating of this study: ⭐⭐⭐

Zhu Z, Shi D, Guankai P, et al. "Retinal age gap as a predictive biomarker for mortality risk." British Journal of Ophthalmology.  18 January 2022. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjophthalmol-2021-319807