Being Male, BMI, Smoking and Depression All Increase Biological Age

Summary: Researchers identify five biological indicators that have a significant impact on biological aging.

Source: eLife

A ‘biological age’ score predicts that being male, overweight, a smoker and having depression all contribute to biological aging, a study published today in eLife reports.

Aging can be measured in different ways. While chronological age is measured by date of birth, scientists have developed a range of measurements to determine our biological age. These include measuring the length of telomeres (little caps on the end of our chromosomes that shorten as we grow older), chemical changes to our DNA (epigenetics), and changes to the proteins and metabolites in our bodies (proteomic and metabolomic measures).

Although studies have linked these individual measurements to physical and mental health, it is not known whether they influence each other – or whether they have a cumulative effect on our overall well being as we age. This new research is the first to combine these individual measurements of biological age and show how they link with mental and physical health.

“To develop a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying biological aging, we wanted to examine how indicators of biological aging relate to each other, how they link to determinants of physical and mental health, and whether a combined biological clock, made up of all age indicators is a better predictor of health,” explains lead author Rick Jansen, Assistant Professor at the Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam UMC, the Netherlands.

The team used blood samples from nearly 3,000 people taking part in the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety. They applied computer modelling to create individual biological aging indicators based on five commonly used measurements: telomere length, epigenetics, gene levels, metabolites and proteomics. The five indicators were then linked back to different factors such as sex, lifestyle factors and known physical and mental disorders such as depression.

Of the five biological aging indicators, only three were found to significantly interact in individuals, such that an increase in one indicator also paralleled an increase in the other. There were many overlapping and distinct links between particular aging indicators and specific lifestyle factors or diseases. But being male, having a high body mass index (BMI), smoking and having metabolic syndrome were most consistently linked with more advanced biological aging.

This shows a stressed looking middle aged man
This new research is the first to combine these individual measurements of biological age and show how they link with mental and physical health. Image is in the public domain

The team also confirmed that depression was linked to more advanced aging measured by epigenetics, gene levels and proteomics. This suggests that biological aging is linked to both mental and physical health.

When they combined all five measures into a composite score of biological age, they found more and stronger associations for the composite score than for each individual biological aging indicator. This composite score had greater associations with BMI, sex, smoking, depression severity and metabolic syndrome, highlighting the interplay between different systems on cumulative biological aging.

“Our work suggests that biological aging indicators largely track distinct, but partially overlapping, aspects of the aging process,” concludes senior author Brenda Penninx, Professor of Psychiatric Epidemiology at the Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam UMC. “Taken together, our findings contribute to the understanding and identification of biological age determinants – important for the development of outcomes for clinical and population-based research.”

About this aging research news

Source: eLife
Contact: Emily Packer – eLife
Image: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Open access.
An integrative study of five biological clocks in somatic and mental health” by Rick Jansen, Laura KM Han, Josine E Verhoeven, Karolina A Aberg, Edwin CGJ van den Oord, Yuri Milaneschi, Brenda WJH Penninx. eLife


Abstract

An integrative study of five biological clocks in somatic and mental health

Biological clocks have been developed at different molecular levels and were found to be more advanced in the presence of somatic illness and mental disorders. However, it is unclear whether different biological clocks reflect similar aging processes and determinants. In ~3000 subjects, we examined whether five biological clocks (telomere length, epigenetic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic clocks) were interrelated and associated to somatic and mental health determinants. Correlations between biological aging indicators were small (all r < 0.2), indicating little overlap. The most consistent associations of advanced biological aging were found for male sex, higher body mass index (BMI), metabolic syndrome, smoking, and depression. As compared to the individual clocks, a composite index of all five clocks showed most pronounced associations with health determinants. The large effect sizes of the composite index and the low correlation between biological aging indicators suggest that one’s biological age is best reflected by combining aging measures from multiple cellular levels.

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