An unobvious factor of accelerated aging has been discovered

Emotional distress explains a significant part of why living in socially disadvantaged neighborhoods is associated with accelerated biological aging.

This is the conclusion reached by American scientists. The work is published in the journal The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences (JGSB).

The study was led by sociologist Kristina Kamis from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The research covered more than 1,440 residents of Wisconsin and was one of the first to simultaneously consider two factors: the accumulated lifetime exposure to socioeconomic conditions of the residential area and the overall level of emotional distress - depression, anxiety, and stress.

Scientists relied on the concept of "risk chains," according to which adverse conditions in early and middle stages of life trigger a sequence of factors that worsen health at a later age. The results showed: long-term living in disadvantaged areas indeed accelerates biological aging, and a significant part of this effect is specifically related to psychological symptoms.

To assess biological age, researchers used three so-called epigenetic "clocks" that analyze DNA changes. Two of them - PhenoAge and GrimAge - reflect aging acceleration relative to chronological age, while the third, Dunedin PACE, shows the rate of aging per year of life. Regardless of the method, the same pattern was identified in all models: the higher the cumulative disadvantage of the living environment, the faster the body ages.

According to Dunedin PACE, more than 60% of participants were aging faster than normal, whereas according to the other two methods, this figure was 42-46%. At the same time, increasing neighborhood disadvantage was associated with both direct acceleration of aging and indirect - through increased emotional distress.

Anxiety, as it turned out, plays a particularly important role. Although depression and stress were also considered, it was anxiety symptoms that proved to be the main psychological "mediator" between social conditions and biological wear of the body. On average, about 10-13% of the influence of disadvantaged environment on accelerated aging was explained by emotional distress.

The uniqueness of the study is that the authors were able to reconstruct the residential history of participants starting from age 18 - in some cases for almost 50 years. This made it possible to assess not the current but the accumulated environmental impact, which is rarely possible in similar studies.

The authors emphasized: the results do not mean that disadvantaged neighborhoods "inevitably" shorten life. However, they show that social conditions and mental health are closely linked to biological aging processes. This means that measures to reduce anxiety, stress, and chronic emotional tension can partially mitigate the long-term consequences of living in an adverse environment - along with broader social and economic changes.