Aging is unavoidable, but some people age at a faster rate than others. The term biological age refers to the age of someone’s cells, rather than how long it has been since someone was born, which is their chronological age.
A recent study including over 3,000 participants identified long-term risk from accelerated biological aging.
For all participants, accelerated biological age was linked to greater risk for death and cardiovascular disease. For women, there was also a higher risk for dementia.
The study was published in Scientific Reports.
The recent study sought to explore differences in outcomes between men and women when it comes to biological age, specifically focusing on long-term data.
Researchers utilized data from Framingham Offspring Study cohorts. They excluded some participants, such as those who lacked data on clinical biomarkers used to estimate biological age.
The research team considered three main outcomes in their analysis: cardiovascular disease, dementia, and all-cause mortality.
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They took into account measurements like total blood cholesterol, blood sugar, and Mini-Mental State Exam scores. They used different biomarkers depending on the situation. Covariates included a number of components, including diabetes, use of medications for blood pressure, and smoking status.
Participants were placed in one of three categories when it came to biological age: accelerated, decelerated, or concordant.
Participants with a concordant biological age had a biological age that essentially matched their chronological age, while the other groups had an age that was higher or lower.
Most participants fell into the concordant biological age category and were middle-aged adults. For participants who had accelerated biological age, on average men were 4 years older than their chronological age, and women 2.5 years older.
The median follow-up time was 26 years for the samples examining dementia and mortality. The median follow-up time was 23 years for the sample examining cardiovascular disease.
During the follow-up, there were 713 cardiovascular disease events, 1,105 deaths, and 265 cases of dementia.
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Participants who had accelerated biological age were at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease. For men, there was a 1.6-fold higher risk, and for women there was a 1.8-fold higher risk compared to participants who had decelerated biological age.
Both men and women with accelerated biological age also had a 2-fold greater mortality risk in comparison to those with decelerated biological age.
For men, accelerated biological age did not appear to increase risk for dementia in a statistically significant way. For women, however, there was an increased risk for dementia.
Sensitivity analyses confirmed that women with accelerated biological age and even concordant biological age were at a higher risk for dementia compared to those with decelerated biological age.
While these findings are striking, it is important to note that this was an observational study, meaning it cannot prove causal relationships, and that there is a possibility of residual confounding.
The concept of biological aging comes with its own limits, with study authors noting that it “serves as a proxy measure for the aging process.”
Furthermore, there is no standard way to calculate biological age, which could lead to major differences in this realm of research.
In this study, biological age is an estimation that researchers calculated by factoring in a number of biomarkers. The authors note that additional biomarkers that they lacked data on could have “been more relevant to the aging process.”
Moreover, many participants from the Framingham Offspring study were white and of European descent, which limits generalizability.
Speaking to Medical News Today, Salim Hayek, MD, a professor of cardiovascular medicine at The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), who was not involved in the current study, highlighted that:
“One limitation deserves attention, and to their credit the authors are candid about it. When they added biological age to a model that already included chronological age, smoking, blood pressure, diabetes, lipids and BMI, prediction barely improved. The change in the c-statistic ran from essentially zero to about 0.01. So the measure tracks risk, but it isn’t telling you much beyond what the individual risk factors already say.”
Future research ought to explore a number of factors, including the differences observed when it came to the risk for dementia. It can also examine what contributes to accelerated biological aging.
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Beverly Pennington, DNP, APRN, FNP-C, a geriatrics health nurse practitioner at UTMB, likewise not involved in the research, told us: “I do like the study, and I think this is a great way to look at accelerated biological age (ABA), but I would want to know what factors were associated that caused the ABA.“
In Pennington’s opinion, these likely include “items such as education, substance abuse, and environmental factors.”
This research does not necessarily point to a need to implement major changes in clinical practice just yet. However, it could help people address certain areas of health.
Hayek noted that these findings may be a good starting point for people to have some important conversations with their healthcare providers.
“In the near term, this isn’t a test to order […] Where I think it earns its keep is in the conversation,” he told us.
“Telling a 55-year-old man that his body looks 61 lands differently from reading him a list of six mildly abnormal labs. If that framing gets someone to control his blood pressure or quit smoking, it has done more than a better c-statistic would,” added Hayek.
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“But the treatment doesn’t change. There is no therapy for accelerated aging; you treat the components, and the components are the same ones we’ve been treating for 40 years,” he pointed out.
The study authors also suggest that looking at biological age could help “identify individuals at higher risk of adverse outcomes not captured by a single biomarker.”
It may also encourage a push towards standards for calculating biological age, since this is not something that has truly been established yet.
Cheng-Han Chen, MD, a board-certified interventional cardiologist and medical director of the Structural Heart Program at MemorialCare Saddleback Medical Center in Laguna Hills, CA, who was not involved in the research, said that “one day, we may have a standardized and clinically validated definition of biological age that could complement traditional measures of health and disease risk.“
“Such a measure could potentially help clinicians identify individuals who appear to be aging biologically faster than expected and who may be at greater risk for cardiovascular disease or other age-related conditions,“ noted Chen.
“It could also potentially help us evaluate whether interventions such as exercise, improving diet, controlling blood pressure and cholesterol, maintaining a healthy weight, or stopping smoking are influencing the underlying processes of biological aging. However, we are not yet at the point where biological age should be used as a routine clinical tool. More research is needed to establish standardized measurements and determine whether changing a person’s biological-age measure actually translates into better health outcomes.”
– Cheng-Han Chen, MD
