Lifestyle and environmental factors affect health and aging more than our genes, study results

A study by researchers from Oxford Population Health has shown that a range of environmental factors, including lifestyle (smoking and physical activity), and living conditions, have a greater impact on health and death premature that our genes.

The researchers used data of almost half a million British participants in the United Kingdom to assess the influence of 164 environmental factors And Genetic risk scores For 22 major diseases on aging, age -related diseasesAnd premature death. The study was published In Nature Medicine.

Key conclusions

• The environmental factors explained 17% of the variation in the risk of death, against less than 2% explained by the genetic predisposition (as we currently understand);
• Of the 25 independent environmental factors identified, smoking, socioeconomic statusPhysical activity and living conditions have had the most impact on mortality and biological aging;
• Smoking was associated with 21 diseases; Socioeconomic factors such as household income, ownership and employment status were associated with 19 diseases; and physical activity was associated with 17 diseases;
• 23 identified factors can be modified;
• Exhibitions have been shown at the start of life, including body weight and maternal smoking around birth, influence aging and the risk of premature death 30 to 80 years later;
• Environmental exhibitions have had a greater effect on lung, heart and liver disease, while genetic risk has dominated dementia and breast cancer.

Professor Cornelia van Duijn, professor of epidemiology of St Cross at Oxford Population Heath and the main author of the newspaper, said that “our research demonstrates the deep impact of the health of exhibitions which can be modified either by individuals or by the bias of policies aimed at improving socio-economic conditions, reducing smoking, which or promote physical activity.

“While genes play a key role in brain conditions and certain cancers, our results highlight the opportunities to mitigate the risks of chronic lung, heart and liver disease which are the main causes of disability and death worldwide.

“Exhibitions at the beginnings of life are particularly important because they show that environmental factors accelerate aging early in life, but amply leaves the opportunity to prevent lasting diseases and early death.”

The authors used a unique measurement of aging (a New “aged clock”) To monitor how people get older using blood protein levels. This allowed them to link environmental exhibitions which predict early mortality with organic aging.

It has previously been shown that this measure detects age-related changes, not only in the United Kingdom Biobank, but also in two other major Chinese and Finland cohort studies.

Dr. Austin Argentieri, principal author of the study at Oxford Population Health and Research, researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital, said that “our Exposome approach has allowed us to quantify the relative contributions of the environment and genetics at Aging, providing the most complete overview to date on the date of environmental and lifestyle factors stimulate aging and death premature.

“These results highlight the potential advantages of concentration of concentration on our environments, our socio-economic contexts and our behaviors for the prevention of many diseases related to premature age and death.”

Professor Bryan Williams, in chief scientific and doctor of the British Heart Foundation, added: “Your income, your postal code and your history should not determine your chances of living a long and healthy life. But this pioneer study strengthens that C ‘is reality for far too many people.

“We have long known that risk factors such as smoking have an impact on our heart and circulatory health, but this new research underlines how great the opportunity is to influence our chances of developing health problems, Including cardiovascular disease and death prematurely.

“We need the urgency of daring actions of the government to target over-the -ior obstacles to good health with which too many people in the United Kingdom face.”

Research shows that if many identified individual exhibitions have played a small role in premature death, the combined effect of these multiple exhibitions together during life (called the exhibition) explained a large proportion of variation in premature mortality .

The ideas of this study open the way to integrated strategies to improve the health of aging populations by identifying the key combinations of environmental factors that shape the risk of premature death and many common diseases related to age simultaneously.

Professor Van Duijn said that “environmental health studies have tended to focus on individual exhibitions based on a specific hypothesis. Although this approach has had many successes, the method has not always given results Reproducible and reliable.

“Instead, we have followed an approach to the exhibition” without hypothesis “and studied all the exhibitions available to find the main engines of the disease and death.

“We have taken a big step forward to understand how to provide precise evidence on the causes and consequences of age -related diseases by combining new calculation methods with clinical and epidemiological knowledge to explore the interaction between several expositions .

“In a constantly evolving environment, it is essential that we combine these techniques with new advances in intelligent technology to monitor the lifestyle and the environment, as well as with biological data, to understand the impact of ‘Environment over time.

“There are still many questions to answer related to diet, lifestyle and exposure to new pathogens (such as bird flu and covid-19) and chemicals (think of pesticides and plastics ), and the impact of environmental and genetic factors in different populations.

The study was conducted by researchers from Oxford Population Health in collaboration with researchers from the departments of psychiatry and anthropology at the University of Oxford; General Hospital of Massachusetts and Broad Institute, Boston; The University of Amsterdam; University of Erasmus, Rotterdam; and the University of Montpellier.