Your exact biological age might be visible in your eyes.

Early death risk could one day be determined by an eye exam.

A new study suggests that doctors may soon be able to determine a patient's risk of premature death by inspecting the small arteries in their eyes.

Even though the probability of being sick or dying prematurely increases with age, it can vary widely, even among people of the same age group, as stated in the statement. This discrepancy is due to the fact that "biological age," as opposed to "clock age," advances at a different pace for each person, depending on their unique set of health conditions.

Various genes, cognitive ability, blood pressure, and immune system activity have all been studied as potential biomarkers that can be used to establish a person's biological age, as reported by Live Science.

The retina, which consists of light-sensitive layers of nerve tissue at the back of the eye, has been suggested in previous studies as a possible predictor of a person's biological age due to the information it can reveal about their susceptibility to developing certain diseases. The study's authors concluded on January 18 that the retina provides a "unique, accessible 'window' to analyze underlying pathological processes of systemic vascular and neurological disorders that are associated with elevated risks of mortality."

The new research used a deep-learning method that determined an individual's mortality risk by measuring the retinal biological age.

More than 80,000 photographs of the fundus (the inside rear surface of the eye, which contains the retina) were evaluated by their deep-learning model, a sort of machine learning and artificial intelligence designed to learn like the human brain. They used the UK Biobank, a biological database of over half a million British citizens, to acquire pictures from approximately 47,000 people between the ages of 40 and 69. First, they checked the validity of their model by examining more than 19,000 fundus photos from over 11,000 people in generally good condition. The hypothesis was that these individuals' retinal biological ages would be very close to their chronological ages.

It did a decent job predicting retinal ages with an average error of 3.5 years between the model and actual ages. The remaining almost 36,000 participants' fundus images were evaluated using the model over 11 years. There was a significant disparity between individuals' biological ages and their chronological ages (known as the "retinal age gap"), with 51% of people showing a gap of more than three years, 28% showing a hole of more than 5, and 4.5% indicating a gap of more than ten years. That is to say; their eyes appeared "older" than their actual ages.

Those with significant age differences were 49-67% more likely to perish due to factors other than heart disease or cancer. Every year that passed between partners raised the chance of mortality by 2% from all causes and 3% from reasons other than cardiovascular disease and cancer. On the other hand, they did not uncover any association between the presence of an age gap in the retina and mortality from cardiovascular disease or cancer.

As an observational study, the authors concede that causality cannot be established. According to the authors, "these results raise the possibility that retinal age may be a clinically meaningful indicator of ageing."

Reference : https://www.livescience.com/eyes-may-reveal-true-biological-age

Image source : https://pixabay.com/id/vectors/dewasa-usia-bayi-anak-kematian-2028245/

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