Looking for clues about your real age? Your grandparents’ education may provide some insight

Eating right, exercising and visiting the doctor regularly can support a long, healthy life, but a new study has identified a possible factor beyond our control: whether you had a grandparent who went to college.

The study, from researchers at Drexel University and colleagues at the University of California and the University of North Carolina, was recently published in the journal Social Sciences and Medicine. The work is titled “Grandparents’ Education Level is Associated with the Epigenetic Age Acceleration of Grandchildren in the National Growth and Health Study.”

Examining data across three generations – education levels of parents and grandparents, and health data of parents and their children – the group found a statistically significant link between the education levels of grandparents and the epigenetic “real” age of their grandchildren (short definition of what is meant by ‘real’ (how old an individual is, based on their health profile and cells).

The study’s finding that grandchildren of college-educated grandparents showed slower biological aging (that is, a younger biological age relative to chronological age) than those whose grandparents did not graduate is based on five different epigenetics-based aging clocks. These clocks use a saliva swab to examine a biological process known as DNA methylation – which changes as the body ages – to predict an individual’s age based on their health profile at the cellular level.

“The research community has established a connection between how social factors, socioeconomic factors, and childhood adversities can contribute to health trajectories,” said lead author Agus Surachman, Ph.D., assistant professor at the Dornsife School of Public Health, who wrote the study completed. his research for the study during his time as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Francisco.

“We know from animal studies that health is passed on across generations, from grandparents to grandchildren. But we now have robust human data showing that not only do parents’ socioeconomic factors play a role in their children’s health, but that that influence goes back a long way.” also an extra generation.”

Previous human studies in this area have shown this exposure to traumatic experiencessuch as the Holocaust and Tutsi genocidemay influence gene methylation among survivors and their children. The data in this study fill an important gap by examining a general population, and a common crude index of exposure to social stress: educational attainment. The authors say that parental education is a useful measure of children’s early life socioeconomic status and exposure to social stressors.

“Socioeconomic advantages in early life parenting may be associated with a better health profile of their offspring through epigenetic mechanisms, especially through the maternal line,” Surachman said.

“This insight into the intergenerational nature of the transmission of social benefits and health should prompt us to reconsider our values. I would like to see more resources invested in education and healthcare, a factor that determines the health of offspring before we even being born.”

Epigenetic clocks are promising tools for estimating service lifeand can provide insights about the risk of chronic diseases and other health consequences. Tests can cost consumers hundreds of dollars, but experts say costs could drop as technology improves.

Mothers were recruited for the NHLBI Growth and Health Study (NGHS 1) when they were 9-10 years old, and re-recruited into the National Growth and Health Study (NGHS 2), to collect health and education information and the health information to determine the epigenetic aging or biological age of their youngest child (2–17 years).

The researchers controlled for other factors that may influence the child’s health, such as the age of the grandchildren, gender, the children’s body-mass index (BMI) and characteristics of the mother: the mother’s family structure in childhood , the mother’s health profile and the mother’s marital status. .

The team also wanted to understand what might help explain intergenerational transmission – whether maternal health could help explain the transmission effect between grandparents’ education and the grandchild’s biological age. They used maternal childhood and adult health data, measuring factors like BMI, cardiovascular health and c-reactive protein in adults to measure body inflammation. They found that maternal health explained a small part of the link between grandparents’ education and their mother’s epigenetic age. grandchildren (14.5% to be precise).

“The link between a grandparent’s socioeconomic status and a grandchild’s epigenetic age is a remarkable finding, across generations,” said senior author Elissa Epel, Ph.D., a professor at the University of California, San Francisco . “This opens up a host of possible explanations and will need to be replicated. For now, we know that poorer maternal metabolic health is a partial mediator of this relationship.”

The authors follow this cohort to examine the predictors of grandparents and parents of offspring as they enter adulthood. They also look at social and psychological factors of accelerated epigenetic aging in samples with chronic conditions, including survivors of breast cancer and chronic kidney disease. However, more research is needed to explore the myriad factors that influence young people’s health trajectories, the authors caution.

“In the United States, we tend to overemphasize individual responsibility when it comes to health — and a lot of people are blamed for their poor health,” says Surachman. “But the reality is that health is much more complex than that. Some factors are simply beyond our control, such as genetics and the hereditary epigenetics we are born with. I hope this helps us show more grace and compassion to ourselves and our communities. .”

In addition to Surachman and Epel, other authors on the paper include Elissa Hamlat of the University of California at San Francisco, Anthony S. Zannas of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Steve Horvath of the University of California at Los Angeles and Barbara Laraia of the University of California Berkeley.