Smoking Linked to Accelerated Brain Aging

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2021.110471

Commentary

Smoking accelerates the aging of multiple organs, but few studies have quantified the association between smoking or smoking cessation and brain aging.

In order to determine the relationship between BrainAge Gap and smoking parameters. We further examined the association of smoking with cognitive decline and whether this relationship is mediated by brain age.

Predictors showed that considerable performance was achieved on the training data (r = 0.712, mean absolute error [MAE] = 4.220) and on the test data (r = 0.725, MAE = 4.160). On average, smokers showed a larger brain age gap (+0.304 years, Cohens d = 0.083) than controls. The range varies by smoking characteristics in that active regular smokers had the largest brain age gap (+ 1. 190 years, Cohens d = 0.321), while controls had the largest brain age gap (+ 0. 304 years, Cohens d = 0.083). d = 0.321)

Light smokers had a moderate brain age gap (+0.478, Cohens d = 0.129), and increased amounts of smoking were observed with a larger BrainAge gap. The longer time to quit smoking was associated with a smaller BrainAge gap (β = -0.015, P = 2.14 × 10-05), while the longer time to quit smoking was associated with a smaller BrainAge gap (β = 0.035, P = 1.72 × 10-20) in ex-smokers.

Furthermore, smoking was associated with cognitive decline, and this relationship was partially mediated by the BrainAge gap.