Heart-age clock linked to heart disease in three human cohorts
Higher heart age relative to actual age was linked to atrial fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat, with hazard ratios of 1.26–1.37, indicating higher relative risk.
Limit: The abstract did not report participants' ages, follow-up duration, or clock age increments
Edited by Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
An observational study tested a heart-age clock in three human cohorts: 62,000 people at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, 45,000 in the Airwave Health Monitoring Study and 1.2 million at Massachusetts General Hospital. Researchers trained an artificial intelligence model on 1.2 million electrocardiograms from the first center. These recordings measure the heart’s electrical activity. They compared the model’s age estimates with people’s actual ages and analyzed associations with heart conditions, accounting for age and sex.
Higher estimated age relative to actual age was associated with heart rhythm disorders, heart failure and other structural heart conditions. In an Airwave subset, the age gap also correlated with enlarged upper heart chambers and a lower fraction of blood pumped out with each heartbeat. Blood protein analysis in that subset found an inflammatory pattern.
Why it matters
Measuring cardiovascular aging could help researchers assess disease risk and select participants for clinical trials. The authors proposed these uses for the clock, alongside identifying potential treatment targets.
Caveats
These observational associations do not show that accelerated clock age causes heart disease or that using the clock improves care. The conference abstract did not report participants’ ages, follow-up duration or the increase in clock age represented by its hazard ratios.
