Aging
Navigate
Submit an Article
Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 16|pp 20029—20049

Association between housing type and accelerated biological aging in different sexes: moderating effects of health behaviors

Ted Kheng Siang Ng1,10, David Bruce Matchar2,3, Timothy V. Pyrkov4, Peter O. Fedichev4,5, Angelique Wei-Ming Chan2,6,7, Brian Kennedy8,9
  • 1Arizona State University, Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation, Phoenix, AZ 85004, USA
  • 2Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School, Program in Health Services and Systems Research, Singapore
  • 3Duke University School of Medicine, Department of Medicine (General Internal Medicine), Durham, NC 27710, USA
  • 4GERO PTE. LTD., Singapore
  • 5Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Dolgoprudny, Moscow Region 141700, Russia
  • 6Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School, Center for Aging, Research and Education, Singapore
  • 7National University of Singapore, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Singapore
  • 8National University of Singapore, Center for Healthy Longevity, Healthy Longevity Program and Department of Biochemistry, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, Singapore
  • 9Singapore Institute of Clinical Sciences, A*STAR, Singapore
  • 10National Cheng Kung University, Institute of Behavioral Medicine, College of Medicine, Taiwan
* This work was performed at Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School, Center for Aging, Research and Education.
Received: May 26, 2021Accepted: August 10, 2021Published: August 29, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203447

Copyright: © 2021 Ng et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Introduction: Despite associated with multiple geriatric disorders, whether housing type, an indicator of socioeconomic status (SES) and environmental factors, is associated with accelerated biological aging is unknown. Furthermore, although individuals with low-SES have higher body mass index (BMI) and are more likely to smoke, whether BMI and smoking status moderate the association between SES and biological aging is unclear. We examined these questions in urbanized low-SES older community-dwelling adults.

Methods: First, we analyzed complete blood count data using the cox proportional hazards model and derived measures for biological age (BA) and biological age acceleration (BAA, the higher the more accelerated aging) (N = 376). Subsequently, BAA was regressed on housing type, controlling for covariates, including four other SES indicators. Interaction terms between housing type and BMI/smoking status were separately added to examine their moderating effects. Total sample and sex-stratified analyses were performed.

Results: There were significant differences between men and women in housing type and BAA. Compared to residents in ≥3 room public or private housing, older adults resided in 1–2 room public housing had a higher BAA. Furthermore, BMI attenuated the association between housing type and BAA. In sex-stratified analyses, the main and interaction effects were only significant in women. In men, smoking status instead aggravated the association between housing type and BAA.

Conclusion: Controlling for other SES indicators, housing type is an independent socio-environmental determinant of BA and BAA in a low-SES urbanized population. There were also sex differences in the moderating effects of health behaviors on biological aging.