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Researchers identified 13 blood proteins linked to brain aging. Shifts in those proteins’ levels in the blood may indicate a person’s brain age.
The team hopes the finding could eventually lead to therapies that adjust those protein levels to slow brain aging.
What Did the Scientists Discover?
A team of Chinese scientists supported by the National Center for Neurological Disorders analyzed MRI scans from nearly 11,000 people aged 45 to 82. That let the researchers calculate each participant’s brain age gap — how much their brain age differed from their biological age.
They used artificial intelligence to estimate each participant’s brain age from features such as brain volume and surface area. Those estimates showed how much accelerated aging each brain had experienced, Live Science reported.
The team then measured roughly 3,000 blood proteins in almost 5,000 participants. Because blood links the brain to the rest of the body, shifts in blood protein levels can reflect changes in the brain.
Overall, the researchers identified 13 proteins whose blood concentrations were significantly associated with brain age. Proteins tied to aging processes like cellular stress and inflammation rose in the blood as brain age increased, while proteins that support brain maintenance—especially those involved in cellular regeneration—fell with age.
Brevinin showed the strongest link to brain age. Brevinin levels fell with age, and lower levels were strongly linked to dementia and stroke.
Brevinin helps neurons communicate, so this finding supports earlier work that the protein could serve as a measurable marker of neurodegenerative disease.
They also found the biggest shifts in those 13 proteins happened around ages 57, 70, and 78.
The study appears in Nature Aging.
