Traumatic Brain Injury and Accelerated Epigenetic Aging Among Post-9/11 Veterans.
Kyle J Bourassa, Sarah L Martindale, Melanie E Garrett and 4 others
PMID 40828005WHAT IT FOUND
Veterans with a history of traumatic brain injury, particularly those injured during deployment, showed faster biological aging.
This association weakened when accounting for PTSD, suggesting shared variance between the two conditions rather than independent effects.
Key findings
01Veterans reporting more lifetime TBI and more deployment-related TBI had faster epigenetic aging scores.
02When PTSD status was included in the same model, neither PTSD nor lifetime TBI were significantly associated with epigenetic aging at a p < .05 level.
03The study is cross-sectional and relied on retrospective self-report for TBI history, which precludes causal inferences and introduces potential recall bias.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
The study design is cross-sectional, so it cannot prove that TBI causes accelerated aging. TBI history was assessed retrospectively via self-report, which is subject to recall and attribution bias. The assessment did not include CT classification, so complicated mild TBI or structural lesions could not be identified. The findings are specific to post-9/11 veterans and may not generalize to civilian populations or other military eras. The association between TBI and aging was not independent of PTSD; when both were analyzed together, neither showed a significant independent effect.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that TBI independently accelerates biological aging beyond the effects of PTSD. The study found that when PTSD was included in the same statistical model, the significant association between TBI and aging scores disappeared, indicating that the observed aging effects may be driven by the high comorbidity between TBI and PTSD rather than TBI alone.
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