Mental illness associated with older biological age

Key takeaways:

• Biomarkers in people with mental illness showed they were biologically older than their actual age.
• This may explain disparities in lifespan and disease prevalence between people with and without mental illness.

Analyses of blood metabolite profiles showed that people with a history of mental illness had a biological age older than their actual age, according to a presentation at the European Congress of Psychiatry.

“It is now possible to predict people’s age from blood metabolites,” Julian Mutz, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate at the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King’s College London, said in a related press release. “We found that, on average, those who had a lifetime history of mental illness had a metabolite profile which implied they were older than their actual age. For example, people with bipolar disorder had blood markers indicating that they were around 2 years older than their chronological age.”

Mutz and colleagues used machine learning tools to predict the biological age of 110,780 U.K. Biobank participants who had data available for 168 metabolomic measures. They compared the predicted age with the actual age of each participant to identify the metabolomic age delta, which was used to evaluate differences in predicted age between people with and without a history of mental illness.

Compared with people who did not have mental illness, people with a history of mental illness had higher metabolomic age deltas. Additional analyses revealed that polygenic scores for mental illness were associated with metabolomic age deltas.

“Our findings indicate that the bodies of people with mental health problems tend to be older than would be expected for an individual their age,” Mutz said in the release. “This may not explain all the differences in health and life expectancy between those with mental health problems and the general population, but it does mean that accelerated biological aging may be an important factor. If we can use these markers to track biological aging, this may change how we monitor the physical health of people with mental illness and how we evaluate the effectiveness of interventions aimed at improving physical health.”

References:

• Bodies of people with mental illness are biologically older than their actual age. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/983520. Published March 26, 2023. Accessed March 29, 2023.
• Mutz J, et al. Estimating accelerated biological aging using machine learning and metabolomics data in people with mental disorders. Presented at: European Congress of Psychiatry; March 25-28, 2023; Paris.