Psychological Factors Substantially Contribute to Biological Aging: Evidence from the Aging Rate in Chinese Older Adults

Overview

Journal Aging (Albany NY)

Specialty Geriatrics

Date 2022 Sep 28

PMID 36170009

Authors

Fedor Galkin

Kirill Kochetov

Diana Koldasbayeva

Manuel Faria

Helene H Fung

Amber X Chen

Alex Zhavoronkov

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

We have developed a deep learning aging clock using blood test data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, which has a mean absolute error of 5.68 years. We used the aging clock to demonstrate the connection between the physical and psychological aspects of aging. The clock detects accelerated aging in people with heart, liver, and lung conditions. We demonstrate that psychological factors, such as feeling unhappy or being lonely, add up to 1.65 years to one's biological age, and the aggregate effect exceeds the effects of biological sex, living area, marital status, and smoking status. We conclude that the psychological component should not be ignored in aging studies due to its significant impact on biological age.

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