Contribution of life course circumstances to the acceleration of phenotypic and functional aging: A retrospective study

Background Accelerated aging leads to increasing burdens of chronic diseases in late life, posing a huge challenge to the society. With two well-developed aging measures (i.e., physiological dysregulation [PD] and frailty index [FI]), this study aimed to evaluate the relative contributions of life course circumstances (e.g., childhood and adulthood socioeconomic status) to variance in aging. Methods We assembled data for 6224 middle-aged and older adults in China from the 2014 life course survey (June to December 2014), the 2015 biomarker collection (July 2015 to January 2016), and the 2015 main survey (July 2015 to January 2016) of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study. Two aging measures (PD and FI) were calculated, with a higher value indicating more accelerated aging. Life course circumstances included childhood (i. e., socioeconomic status, war, health, trauma, relationship, and parents' health) and adulthood circumstances (i.e., socioeconomic status, adversity, and social support), demographics, and behaviours. The Shapley value decomposition, hierarchical clustering, and general linear regression models were performed. Findings The Shapley value decomposition revealed that all included life course circumstances accounted for about 6.3% and 29.7% of variance in PD and FI, respectively. We identified six subpopulations who shared similar patterns in terms of childhood and adulthood circumstances. The most disadvantaged subpopulation (i.e., subpopulation 6 [more childhood trauma and adulthood adversity]) consistently exhibited accelerated aging indicated by the two aging measures. Relative to the most advantaged subpopulation (i.e., subpopulation 1 [less childhood trauma and adulthood adversity]), PD and FI in the most disadvantaged subpopulation were increased by an average of 0.14 (i.e., coefficient, by one-standard deviation, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.06-0.21; p < 0.0001) and 0.10 (by one-point, 95% CI 0.09-0.11; p < 0.0001), respectively. Interpretation Our findings highlight the different contributions of life course circumstances to phenotypic and functional aging. Special attention should be given to promoting health for the disadvantaged subpopulation and narrowing their health gap with advantaged counterparts.Copyright (C) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Automated summary

This study evaluated the impact of life course circumstances on aging disparities and found that disadvantaged subpopulations are more likely to experience accelerated aging. The findings emphasize the importance of promoting health among disadvantaged subpopulations and reducing health disparities with advantaged counterparts.