I need a general advice from the experts out there.

I am comparing cortical measures (thickness and volume) between controls and patients using FreeSurfer. I used 'age' and 'gender' as covariates (in fsgd file) while calculating group differences.

I was wondering even if I removed the effects of 'age' and 'gender' for this comparison, should I perform and report t-test/one way ANOVA results if there are significant differences in 'age' between the two groups or there is no need to report 'age' difference results in manuscript, regardless of being significant or non-significant.

Thanks.