Exploring predictors of healthy ageing in UK Biobank
Lead Research Organisation:
King's College London
Department Name: Social Genetic and Dev Psychiatry Centre
Abstract
Some individuals experience very little ill-health and functional decline in old age. As this is a desirable outcome to achieve for the wider population, a greater understanding of the factors associated with positive health outcomes is paramount. The principal aim of the PhD is to explore predictors of healthy ageing in the UK Biobank study. A key aspect is to examine associations between health status and (i) sociodemographic characteristics, (ii) psychosocial factors, (iii) lifestyle factors and (iv) environmental exposures (e.g. air pollution). The wider aim is to generate new knowledge of the factors associated with the maintenance of health across the life course with the long-term objective of promoting health in later life.
Current and future projects include the following:
-Examine sociodemographic characteristics, psychosocial factors, lifestyle factors and environmental exposures associated with health
-Examine how predictive baseline health metrics are of health outcomes at follow-up (e.g. all-cause and cause-specific mortality)
-Examine age-related changes in physiology in individuals with depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders and healthy controls
-Examine biological ageing in individuals with mental disorders or chronic pain, including polygenic risk score analyses
Current and future projects include the following:
-Examine sociodemographic characteristics, psychosocial factors, lifestyle factors and environmental exposures associated with health
-Examine how predictive baseline health metrics are of health outcomes at follow-up (e.g. all-cause and cause-specific mortality)
-Examine age-related changes in physiology in individuals with depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders and healthy controls
-Examine biological ageing in individuals with mental disorders or chronic pain, including polygenic risk score analyses
Studentship Projects
| Project Reference | Relationship | Related To | Start | End | Student Name |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BB/R505122/1 | 01/06/2018 | 31/12/2022 | |||
| 2050702 | Studentship | BB/R505122/1 | 01/06/2018 | 31/05/2022 | Julian Mutz |
| Description | Research findings from the work funded through this award highlight many potential pathways to improve population health and life expectancy and to reduce the excess mortality of individuals with mental disorders. We identified key sociodemographic, psychosocial, lifestyle and environmental exposures associated with health (Mutz, Roscoe, & Lewis, 2021, BMC Medicine). This study highlights the multifactorial nature of health, the importance of non-medical factors (e.g., loneliness, healthy lifestyle behaviours and weight management) and the need to improve the health of individuals who have a low household income. We further examined how different combinations of self-rated and objective health status predicted all-cause mortality and leading causes of death in the UK (Mutz & Lewis, 2022, Scientific Reports). We found that self-rated health captures additional health-related information beyond medical diagnoses and concluded that it should be more widely assessed. In a series of three studies, we examined differences across 15 physiological biomarkers between individuals with a history of depression (Mutz & Lewis, 2021, Aging), bipolar disorder (Mutz, Young, & Lewis, 2022, Journal of Affective Disorders) or anxiety disorder (Mutz, Hoppen, Fabbri, & Lewis, 2022, British Journal of Psychiatry) and people without mental illness. Findings from these studies suggest that mental disorders are best conceptualised as complex multi-system conditions, affecting not just the central nervous system or the brain, and that there is no clear-cut division between mental and somatic health. In a subsequent study (Mutz, Choudhury, Zhao, & Dregan, 2022, BMC Medicine), we found that adults with a history of mental illness had a high prevalence of frailty, which is a state of decreased physiological reserve and increased vulnerability to adverse health outcomes. Individuals with bipolar disorder and frailty had a three-fold higher mortality risk than people without a history of mental illness or frailty, highlighting an unmet therapeutic need. Finally, we examined differences in telomere length, a hallmark of cellular ageing, between individuals with and without a history of mental disorders (Mutz & Lewis, 2022, Biological Psychiatry: Global Open Science). We found that telomeres were shorter in individuals with depression or bipolar disorder and in people who had an increased genetic risk score for depression. Importantly, this funding also facilitated training in a number of advanced computational and data analytical methods. |
| Exploitation Route | The peer-reviewed publications associated with this research have been cited >80 times to date by other researchers, suggesting that our findings inform related research and contribute to the generation of knowledge. The analytical code that was written in the context of this research has been shared with other researchers through the UK Biobank study. |
| Sectors | Healthcare,Other |