Epigenetic Aging Helps Explain Differential Resilience in Older Adults.

ABSTRACT: Past research suggests that resilience to health hazards increases with age, potentially because less resilient individuals die at earlier ages, leaving behind their more resilient peers. Using lifetime cigarette smoking as a model health hazard, we examined whether accelerated epigenetic aging (indicating differences in the speed of individuals' underlying aging process) helps explain age-related resilience in a nationally representative sample of 3,783 older U.S. adults from the Health and Retirement Study. Results of mediation moderation analyses indicated that participants aged 86 or older showed a weaker association between lifetime cigarette smoking and mortality relative to participants aged 76-85 and a weaker association between smoking and multimorbidity relative to all younger co

SUBMITTER: Klopack ET 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11485224 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature