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Original research
Attitudes to ageing, biomarkers of ageing and mortality: the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936
  1. Kyle J J McLachlan1,
  2. James H Cole2,3,4,
  3. Sarah E Harris5,
  4. Riccardo E Marioni5,6,
  5. Ian J Deary5,
  6. Catharine R Gale5,7
  1. 1 Medical School, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
  2. 2 Neuroimaging, Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, London, UK
  3. 3 Centre for Medical Imaging Computing, Computer Science, University College London, London, UK
  4. 4 Dementia Research Centre, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK
  5. 5 Psychology, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
  6. 6 MRC Institute of Genetics and Molecular Medicine, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK
  7. 7 MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, University of Southampton, Southampton, Hampshire, UK
  1. Correspondence to Professor Catharine R Gale, MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit, The University of Southampton, Southampton, SO16 6YD, UK; crg{at}mrc.soton.ac.uk

Abstract

Objective To investigate whether people with more positive attitudes to ageing are biologically younger as defined by leucocyte telomere length, accelerated DNA methylation GrimAge (AgeAccelGrim) and brain-predicted age difference, and whether these biomarkers explain relationships between attitudes to ageing and mortality.

Methods We used linear regression to examine cross-sectionally attitudes to ageing (measured using the Attitudes to Ageing Questionnaire) and the three biomarkers in 758 adults, mean age 72.5 years, from the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936. We used Cox proportional hazards models to examine longitudinally attitudes to ageing and mortality and the role of the biomarkers.

Results More positive attitude to physical change was associated with younger biological age, as measured by AgeAccelGrim and brain-predicted age difference in age-adjusted and sex-adjusted models: for an SD higher score, AgeAccelGrim was lower by -0.73 (95% CI -1.03 to -0.42) of a year, and brain-predicted age difference was lower by -0.87 (1.51 to 0.23) of a year. Both associations were attenuated by adjustment for covariates and not significant after simultaneous adjustment for all covariates and correction for multiple testing. More positive attitudes to physical change were associated with lower mortality: for an SD higher score the age-adjusted and sex-adjusted HR (95% CI) was 0.66 (0.56 to 0.78). Adjustment for AgeAccelGrim or brain-predicted age difference attenuated this association slightly. It remained significant after adjustment for all covariates.

Conclusion We found partial evidence that attitudes to ageing are linked with ageing biomarkers but they accounted for only a little of the association between attitudes and mortality.

  • mortality
  • epidemiology of ageing
  • psychology
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to copy, redistribute, remix, transform and build upon this work for any purpose, provided the original work is properly cited, a link to the licence is given, and indication of whether changes were made. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2019-213462

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors CG and ID planned the study; JC conducted the analyses that provided the brain age data; SH conducted the analyses that provided the telomere length data; RM conducted the analyses that provided the methylation age data; KMcL and CG carried out the statistical analysis; KMcL drafted the manuscript. All authors contributed to the interpretation of the data and critically revised the manuscript.

    • Funding This work was supported by the Disconnected Mind project (funded by Age UK and MRC (Mr/M01311/1 and G1001245/96077)) and undertaken within the University of Edinburgh Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology (funded by the BBSRC and MRC as part of the Life Long Health and Wellbeing programme (MR/K026992/1)).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Not required.

    • Ethics approval Ethical approval was obtained from the Multicentre Ethics Committee for Scotland (MREC/01/0/56) and Lothian Research Ethics Committee (LREC/2003/2/29).

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data availability statement Data may be obtained from a third party and are not publicly available. Data are available only on request because there are ethical restrictions on openly sharing the dataset. The consent forms for the study included that participants’ data, some of which is sensitive, would only be used for research. Data are available by submitting a data access form to i.deary@ed.ac.uk or lbc1936@ed.ac.uk.