{"doi":"10.1101/2024.10.18.24315761","title":"MRI signature of brain age underlying post- traumatic stress disorder in World Trade Center responders","abstract":"Abstract The men and women involved in rescue and recovery operations at the 9/11 World Trade Center (WTC) site have a greater prevalence (23%) of persistent, clinically significant post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Recent structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies demonstrate significant neural differences between WTC responders with and without PTSD. Here, we used brain age, a novel MRI-based data-driven biomarker optimized to detect accelerated structural aging, and examined the impact of PTSD on this process. Using BrainAgeNeXt, a novel convolutional neural network trained and validated on 11,574 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) T1- weighted scans, we predicted brain age in WTC responders with PTSD (WTC-PTSD, n = 47) and age/sex matched responders without PTSD (non-PTSD, n = 52). Predicted Age Difference (PAD) was then calculated for each WTC responder by subtracting chronological age from brain age. A positive PAD indicates that the responder’s brain is aging faster than expected for their chronological age. We found that PAD is significantly greater with WTC-PTSD compared to non-PTSD responders ( p < 0.001). Further, we found that WTC exposure duration (months working on site) moderates the association between PTSD and PAD (p=0.0050). Our results suggested that brain age is a valid biomarker to compare aging trajectories in responders with and without PTSD. In particular, PTSD may be a substantial risk factor for accelerated neurodegeneration in this vulnerable and aging population.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2024,"id":492169,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":1,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.926,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2024-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":308518,"name":"Francesco La Rosa","orcid":"0000-0002-9224-4664","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1338435,"name":"Anna Sather","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1115639,"name":"Elza Rechtman","orcid":"0000-0002-5034-6048","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1116023,"name":"Maryam Jalees","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1199659,"name":"Ismail Nabeel","orcid":"0000-0002-6909-1970","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":476522,"name":"Alison Pellecchia","orcid":"0000-0003-0150-289X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":476523,"name":"Stephanie Santiago‐Michels","orcid":"0000-0002-9041-771X","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1338436,"name":"Evelyn Bromet","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":275023,"name":"Roberto G. Lucchini","orcid":"0000-0002-9723-0237","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":264440,"name":"Benjamin J. Luft","orcid":"0000-0001-9008-7004","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":366958,"name":"Sean Clouston","orcid":"0000-0002-6124-0329","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":397895,"name":"Erin Beck","orcid":"0000-0001-7839-7958","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":369819,"name":"Cheuk Y. Tang","orcid":"0000-0002-9828-0092","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":307120,"name":"Megan K. Horton","orcid":"0000-0002-8139-5918","position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1115638,"name":"Azzurra Invernizzi","orcid":"0000-0001-7411-8552","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":86,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:08:49.768795Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}