Accelerated biological aging and risk of depression and anxiety: evidence from 424,299 UK Biobank participants

Theory predicts that biological processes of aging may contribute to poor mental health in late life. To test this hypothesis, we evaluated prospective associations between biological age and incident depression and anxiety in 424,299 UK Biobank participants. We measured biological age from clinical traits using the KDM-BA and PhenoAge algorithms. At baseline, participants who were biologically older more often experienced depression/anxiety. During a median of 8.7 years of follow-up, participants with older biological age were at increased risk of incident depression/anxiety (5.9% increase per standard deviation [SD] of KDM-BA acceleration, 95% confidence intervals [CI]: 3.3%-8.5%; 11.3% increase per SD of…

• CI
  Canadian Institute for Advanced Research
• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Award: 82173499
• CC
  Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention

  Award: 2022-CKL-03
• PU
  Peking University

  Award: BMU2021YJ044
• CF
  Centers for Disease Control and Prevention