Aging
Effect of Immigration to the US on Accelerated Aging in the Health and Retirement Study: Differences between Hispanic & Non-Hispanic Immigrants. Antonio J. Bustillo* Antonio Bustillo Adina Zeki Al Hazzouri Kaylie N. Moropoulos Xuexin Yu M. Maria Glymour Katrina L. Kezios
The effect of immigration on accelerated aging is understudied, and it is unclear if this relationship differs for Hispanic vs. non-Hispanic immigrant groups. Using the 2016 Venous Blood Study subsample of the Health and Retirement Study and data on immigration from 1995-2016, we assessed the effects of immigration to the US on accelerated biological aging, separately for 398 Hispanic (N=266 Immigrant & N=132 Non-Immigrant) and 2857 non-Hispanic (N=167 Immigrant & N=2690 Non-Immigrant) participants. Immigration was defined as being born outside vs. in the US. Accelerated aging (AA) was defined as the residual of models which regressed each of the 13 epigenetic clocks on chronological age. Residuals were standardized for ease of comparison between clocks. Positive AA scores indicate age acceleration. We modeled propensity scores (PS) for immigration status using the following confounders of immigration and AA: gender, race, education (years), parental education (years), ever smoked, and ever married. Separate PS models were created for Hispanic & non-Hispanic participants. We used overlap weighting to estimate the ATE in the overlapping population (ATO) as the mean difference in weighted AA scores between immigrants vs. non-immigrants. We calculated 95% CIs using the delta method. In general, Hispanic immigrants tended to show equal or decelerated aging compared with their non-immigrant counterparts, but often with wide CIs (ATO_AA Levine/PhenoAge = -0.25, 95% CI: -0.45., -0.05; ATO_AA Vidal-Bralo = -0.24, 95% CI: -0.44, -0.04; ATO_AA GrimAge = -0.19, 95% CI: -0.36, -0.01). Among non-Hispanic participants, ATOs suggested either equal or accelerated aging for immigrants vs. non-immigrants, although only one clock reached statistical significance (ATO_AA Yang = 0.17, 95% CI: 0.01, 0.33). Immigration to the US may contribute to aging, but the direction (acceleration/deceleration) may vary by Hispanic ethnicity and larger samples are needed for precise conclusions.
