What the Study Did

Researchers analyzed MRI scans from 557 people across the UK, Spain, and Singapore. They used data from 191 healthy individuals to build their model and tested it on 366 people who had conditions like high blood pressure, diabetes, or obesity. The focus was on two critical cardiac parameters: left atrial end-systolic volume and left atrial ejection fraction.

In healthy individuals (median age: 34), the model’s predicted heart age closely matched their real age. However, in patients with comorbidities (median age: 53), the functional heart age averaged 4.6 years older than their chronological age. For example, someone aged 50 with hypertension might have a heart functioning like that of a 55-year-old.

The ability to predict functional heart age offers a significant step forward in preventive cardiology. It reveals how underlying conditions accelerate ageing at a structural and functional level, even when outward symptoms haven’t appeared yet.

Patients with hypertension, atrial fibrillation, and diabetes mellitus had significantly older hearts than healthy controls. Functional heart age also increased with higher classes of obesity, reaching statistical significance in Class III patients.

This approach could change how clinicians manage early heart disease, potentially treating it before a patient experiences serious events like a heart attack or stroke.

Why It Matters for Public Health

Dr Pankaj Garg, who led the study and serves as a cardiologist at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, noted that discovering your heart is older than your actual age can motivate people to take more decisive action—such as improving blood pressure management, adopting a healthier diet, or increasing physical activity.

Knowing your heart’s functional age may also help doctors target treatment more precisely. Rather than addressing each risk factor separately, they can assess a person’s cumulative risk and intervene more effectively.

Cardiac MRI is the preferred method for assessing heart structure and performance. It also has the advantage of being radiation-free, unlike CT scans, which makes it suitable for repeated use in monitoring heart health over time.

While population-wide screening isn’t practical yet, researchers suggest that individuals already undergoing heart MRI for clinical reasons could benefit from having their scans assessed with this new model.

The model is fully automated and could be integrated into existing diagnostic systems, potentially standardizing how heart age is reported across hospitals.

The research team hopes this technique will become a valuable addition to routine cardiac assessments. It could especially help patients at high risk of cardiovascular disease make more informed decisions about their health.

The key question now, Dr Garg added, is how individuals can bring their heart’s functional age in line with their real age through better lifestyle choices and medical management.

“That means managing blood pressure, keeping glucose levels in check, staying active, and maintaining a healthy weight.”

The study, published in the Open European Heart Journal, was supported by Wellcome and conducted in collaboration with institutions in the UK, Spain, Singapore, and the Netherlands.

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