Cat brains age like humans: translating time shows pet cats live to be natural models for human aging

Abstract

Whether an animal can achieve a lifespan equivalent to a human in their 80s remains an open question. Cats may serve as valuable models for human aging because there is some evidence that they can develop human related aging patterns. Here, we leveraged 3754 observations extracted from age-related brain variation, blood chemistry profiles, and other data to equate ages across the lifespan of humans and cats. We used structural MR scans (7T and 3T MRI) from pet and colony cats to quantify age-related brain metrics during aging. Cat and human brains exhibit similar age-related patterns of brain atrophy. We used common patterns of brain change and other health-related metrics to generate age alignments across the lifespan to late stages of life (e.g. an 80-year-old human equates to a 15-year-old cat). We also collected observations across multiple cat populations, including pets, zoos, and colonies to encapsulate individual variation in cross-species age alignments. One major finding to emerge is that pet cats are studied at significantly older ages than colony cats, and pet cats demonstrate a high degree of age-related brain atrophy. We demonstrate that it is feasible to translate ages across the lifespan of humans and cats.