The Association between Brain Age and Alcohol Use

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundAlcohol has been shown to have both beneficial and adverse associations with cognitive health in aging, dependent upon amount consumed, but associations with structural brain measures are less well understood. Here, we investigated whether predicted brain age, calculated using a voxel‐based algorithm trained on a large dataset, differs by alcohol use among a cohort of healthy older adults.MethodParticipants included 163 community dwelling older adults (aged 56‐97 years, mean 77 years, 60% females). We categorized individuals as: non‐drinkers (30.7%), light drinkers (1‐7 drinks/week; 47.2%) moderate drinkers (> 7‐14 drinks/week; 12.3%), or heavy drinkers (> 14 drinks/week; 9.8%). In secondary analyses, we explored the effect of differentiating the non‐drinker group into never drinkers (5.5%), former drinkers (10.4%), and occasional drinkers (14.7%). Brain age was calculated using structural MRIs processed with the BrainAgeR program (Cole et al, 2018). We calculated predicted brain age difference (PBAD) by subtracting predicted brain age (PBA) from chronological age. We used analysis of variance (ANOVA) to determine if PBAD differed across groups.ResultsPBA was highly correlated with actual age (r = .713). PBAD differed significantly across groups (F (3,150) = 3.20; p = 0.025): PBAD was significantly higher among heavy drinkers (average PBAD = 3.0 years) compared to all other groups. Non‐drinkers, light drinkers, and moderate drinkers showed younger than actual brain age, by 1.3, 2.9, and 3.3 years, respectively, with no significant differences across groups. Our secondary analysis showed that PBAD among former drinkers was not significantly different from that of heavy drinkers while never drinkers and occasional drinkers showed significantly younger PBAD relative to heavy drinkers.ConclusionAmong this sample of healthy older adults, consumption of more than 14 drinks/week was associated with older than expected brain age. This is consistent with prior literature demonstrating that drinking above recommended guidelines is associated with brain volume loss. In contrast, never drinking and lighter drinking was associated with younger than expected brain age. While we found little evidence for a beneficial association of light or moderate drinking, drinking within guidelines does not appear to adversely affect brain health even among older adults.