The Framingham Heart Study is an observational study that first began in 1948 and has now been conducted continuously for three generations.

The Columbia analysis is the first to link educational mobility to the pace of biological aging and mortality. “It has long been known that people with high levels of education tend to live longer. But how does this happen and, importantly, what interventions can promote educational attainment? “There are many challenges to understanding whether it contributes to health benefits,” said Dr. Daniel Belsky, associate professor of epidemiology at the Columbia Mailman School and Center on Aging and lead author of the paper.

To measure the pace of aging, researchers applied an algorithm known as the DunedinPACE epigenetic clock to genomic data collected by the Framingham Heart Study. The latest research results showed that according to the criteria of the DunedinPACE epigenetic clock, the pace of aging slows down by 2-3% if he receives two more years of schooling. This slowing of the pace of aging equates to an approximately 10 percent reduction in mortality risk in the Framingham Heart Study, according to Belsky’s previous research on the association between Dunedin PACE and mortality risk.

DunedinPACE was developed by researchers at Columbia University and reported in January 2022. Based on the analysis of chemical tags, or DNA methylation marks, on DNA found in white blood cells, DunedinPACE is named after the Dunedin Study birth cohort used in its development. DunedinPACE (short for Pace of Aging Computed from the Epigenome) is measured through a blood test and acts like a speedometer for the aging process, measuring how quickly or slowly a person’s body changes as they age. .

Biological aging refers to the accumulation of molecular changes that gradually compromise the integrity and resilience of cells, tissues, and organs as we age.

Columbia researchers used data from the 14,106 Framingham Heart Study studies across three generations to link children’s educational attainment data with their parents’ educational attainment data. Data from some participants who provided blood samples during data collection was then used to calculate the pace of biological aging using the DunedinPACE epigenetic clock. In the primary analysis, the researchers tested the association between educational mobility, aging, and mortality in a subset of 3,101 participants for whom the pace of educational mobility and aging could be calculated.

Researchers also tested whether differences in educational attainment between siblings were associated with differences in the pace of aging among 2,437 participants with siblings.

“The main confound in studies like this is that people with different levels of education tend to come from families with different levels of educational attainment and other resources,” said the director of the Department of Epidemiology, which Belsky directs. explained Gloria Graf, a doctoral candidate at . First author of the study. “To address these confounds, we consider educational mobility, how much (or less) education a person has completed compared to their parents, and sibling differences in educational attainment, i.e. They focused on how much more (or less) education a person completed compared to their parents.” These research designs controlled for differences between families and isolated the effects of education. make it possible. ”

By combining these study designs with the new DunedinPACE epigenetic clock, researchers were able to test how education affects the rate of aging. Then, by combining education and pace of aging data with long-term records of how long participants lived, the researchers found that a slower pace of aging in people with more education was associated with longer lifespans. I was able to determine if this was the cause.

“Our findings support the hypothesis that interventions to promote educational attainment slow the pace of biological aging and promote longevity,” Graf said. “Ultimately, experimental evidence is needed to confirm our findings,” Belsky added. “Epigenetic clocks like DunedinPace have the potential to enhance such experimental studies by providing results that can reflect the impact of education on healthy aging well before disease or disability develops later in life. is hidden.”

“We found that upward mobility in education is associated with both a slower rate of aging and a lower risk of mortality,” Graf said. “In fact, up to half of the educational gradient in mortality that we observed could be explained by healthier aging trajectories in more educated participants.” This pattern of association is similar across generations. The same was true within family sibling comparisons. Siblings with higher educational mobility tended to age at a slower pace than their less educated siblings.

Co-authors are Calen Ryan, Meeraj Kothari, and Alison Aiello of Columbia Mailman School of Public Health and Butler Columbia Aging Center. Peter Muennig, Columbia Postman School of Public Health. Terry Moffitt, Avshalom Caspi, and Karen Sugden from Duke University; and Hexuan Liu of the University of Cincinnati.

This research was supported by National Institutes of Health grants R01AG073402, R01AG073207, and R21AG078627.