GDF15 and Brain atrophy: This was the first step of the present work, as previous studies have found an association between the circulating levels of GDF15 and the risk of dementia, cerebrovascular disease, cognitive impairment as well as brain atrophy, and AD (Fuchs et al., 2013; Chai et al., 2016; Jiang et al., 2016; Nasrabady et al., 2018; Wu et al., 2021; Xue et al., 2022).