Disparities in accelerated brain aging in recent-onset and chronic schizophrenia

Patients with schizophrenia experience accelerated aging, accompanied by abnormalities in biomarkers such as shorter telomere length. Brain age prediction using neuroimaging data has gained attention in schizophrenia research, with consistently reported increases in brain-predicted age difference (brain-PAD). However, its associations with clinical symptoms and illness duration remain unclear.

We developed brain age prediction models using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data from 10,938 healthy individuals. The models were validated on an independent test dataset comprising 79 healthy controls, 57 patients with recent-onset schizophrenia, and 71 patients with chronic schizophrenia. Group comparisons and the clinical associations of brain-PAD were analyzed using multiple linear regression. SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) values estimated feature contributions to the model, and between-group differences in SHAP values and group-by-SHAP value interactions were also examined.

Patients with recent-onset schizophrenia and chronic schizophrenia exhibited increased brain-PAD values of 1.2 and 0.9 years, respectively. Between-group differences in SHAP values were identified in the right lateral prefrontal area (false discovery rate [FDR] p = 0.022), with group-by-SHAP value interactions observed in the left prefrontal area (FDR p = 0.049). A negative association between brain-PAD and Full-scale Intelligence Quotient scores in chronic schizophrenia was noted, which did not remain significant after correction for multiple comparisons.

Brain-PAD increases were pronounced in the early phase of schizophrenia. Regional brain abnormalities contributing to brain-PAD likely vary with illness duration. Future longitudinal studies are required to overcome limitations related to sample size, heterogeneity, and the cross-sectional design of this study.