Saed News: A new study suggests that the eyes are not only a window to the soul but also to a person’s health.
According to SAEDNEWS, citing Medicine Net, researchers reported that premature aging of the retina may be a warning sign for major diseases such as diabetes or heart disease.
They found that individuals with advanced retinal aging—the light-sensitive layer of cells lining the back of the eye—are at higher risk of developing chronic diseases.
For the study, researchers trained an artificial intelligence (AI) model to estimate the biological “wear-and-tear age” of the retina based on fundus images, which are photographs of the inner back wall of the eye.
Researchers said that AI analysis of these images could help detect such diseases during routine medical checkups.
Lead researcher Professor Tohru Nakazawa from Tohoku University in Japan said in a press release: “Fundus images are non-invasive eye photographs taken as part of regular health checkups—so no additional procedures are needed.”
For the new study, researchers trained the AI model using more than 50,000 fundus images to assess retinal age. If retinal aging is accelerated by unhealthy behaviors or disease, a person’s retina may appear older than their actual chronological age.
The AI model performed well in predicting a person’s real age based on retinal images, but researchers found that in some individuals there was a larger gap between retinal age and chronological age.
The analysis showed that people with diabetes, heart disease, or a history of stroke had a much larger gap between retinal and chronological age. Their retinas appeared older than expected.
Nakazawa said: “We are planning a study involving more than 10,000 people with continuous three-year follow-up to examine whether retinal age-related signals are linked to the progression of cardiovascular and other systemic diseases in the future.”
