The strength of your bones could be seen in your eyes

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2026-05-15 04:00

Australia; International

Photo by Jose A.Thompson on Unsplash

The biological age of your eyes could be an indicator of how strong your bones are and if you're developing osteoporosis, according to international and Australian research. The team say lack of access to bone density scans can lead to people with osteoporosis only finding out they have it when they fracture a bone. Retinal photographs taken from the back of the eye are a way researchers can estimate a person's biological age, so the researchers compared retinal photographs with bone mineral density scans and fracture risk scores from nearly 2,000 older adults in Singapore, alongside over 40,000 UK Biobank study participants. They say older biological age calculated using the retinal photographs was linked to lower bone mineral density and higher osteoporosis risk, meaning taking a retinal photograph could be another option for assessing the risk of fractures before they happen.

Attachments

Note: Not all attachments are visible to the general public. Research URLs will go live after the embargo ends.

Research PLOS, Web page The URL will go live after the embargo ends

Journal/
conference: PLOS DIgital Health

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Centre for Vision Research Australia, Singapore National Eye Centre

Funder: This work was supported by the National Medical Research Council of Singapore (NMRC/CIRG/1488/2018 to C.Y.C.). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Media Contact/s

Contact details are only visible to registered journalists.