A groundbreaking study has found that environmental, social and political factors can accelerate aging, suggesting the need for public health strategies to address structural inequalities and governance deficits.
A landmark international study involving 161,981 participants from 40 countries reveals that factors like air pollution, social inequality and weak democratic institutions significantly accelerate aging.
The groundbreaking research, published today in Nature Medicine, was conducted by an international team of scientists, including experts from Trinity College Dublin.
The study introduces a comprehensive global exposome framework — the study of environmental exposures and their impact on health — and a novel measure of accelerated aging known as Bio-Behavioral Age Gaps (BBAGs).
BBAGs are the discrepancies between a person’s chronological age and their predicted age based on their health metrics, cognition, education, functionality and risk factors such as cardiometabolic health.
“Our biological age reflects the world we live in. Exposure to toxic air, political instability and inequality, of course, affect society, but also shapes our health. We need to stop thinking of brain health as a purely individual responsibility and consider a more ecological and neurosyndemic framework,” corresponding author Agustin Ibanez, a researcher at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) at Trinity College Dublin and Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat), said in a news release.
New Metrics
The study’s critical timing cannot be overstated.
With global democracy waning, environmental pollution reaching crisis levels and wealth gaps widening, these findings offer the first solid evidence that structural exposures beyond individual lifestyle factors are deeply embedded in our aging processes.
First author Hernan Hernandez, from BrainLat, echoes the urgency of these findings: “This is not a metaphor: environmental and political conditions leave measurable fingerprints across 40 countries, revealing a clear gradient of accelerated aging from Africa to Latin America, Asia and Europe.”
Significant Findings
Using advanced artificial intelligence and epidemiological modeling, the study’s researchers developed the BBAG metric to compare predicted biological age to chronological age, discovering varying rates of accelerated or delayed aging across different world regions.
Europe showed the healthiest aging, while Egypt and South Africa had the fastest. Asia and Latin America were in the middle, with Eastern and Southern European countries showing more rapid aging.
The study indicated that faster aging correlated strongly with lower national income levels.
Key exposures linked to accelerated aging included:
- Physical factors: Poor air quality
- Social factors: Economic and gender inequality, migration
- Sociopolitical factors: Limited political representation, restricted voting rights, unfair elections and weak democracies
Higher BBAGs predicted future declines in both cognitive abilities and daily functioning, indicating real-world consequences of these accelerated aging processes.
“Whether a person ages in a healthy or accelerated way is shaped not only by individual choices or biology, but also by their physical, social and political environments — and these effects vary widely between countries,” added co-corresponding author Sandra Baez, an Atlantic Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at Trinity’s GBHI.
The Need for Policy and Prevention
This study redefines healthy aging as an environmental, social and political phenomenon, suggesting a need for public health strategies that address structural inequalities and governance deficits.
“Governments, international organizations and public health leaders must urgently act to reshape environments, from reducing air pollution to strengthening democratic institutions,” added co-first author Hernando Santamaria-Garcia, an Atlantic Fellow at GBHI, University of California, San Francisco.
To foster healthy aging and lower dementia risk globally, it is necessary to tackle the root causes, addressing systemic inequalities, the societal impact of politics and the environmental factors that undermine healthy aging.
Source: Trinity College Dublin