Overview
- The peer-reviewed analysis, published Wednesday in Alzheimer's & Dementia, links older biological age to greater dementia risk and earlier onset.
- Researchers at King's College London studied more than 220,000 UK Biobank participants using blood metabolites to calculate a biological-age measure called MileAge delta.
- About 16% of people whose biological age exceeded their actual age by over one standard deviation faced roughly 20% higher overall risk and 60% higher risk for vascular dementia.
- People with advanced biological aging and two APOE ε4 copies had up to a tenfold higher likelihood of dementia, with genetic and aging signals acting largely independently.
- Authors say a simple plasma test could scale for midlife screening or to enrich prevention trials, though the approach remains a research tool rather than a diagnostic.