COIOS
Healthcare today Item confirms preprint

Socioeconomic advantage tracks slower biological ageing across 12 European countries

In SHARE, three Klemera-Doubal biological-age measures predicted functional limitation, cognition and mortality, and every indicator of socioeconomic advantage was associated with lower age acceleration, though the size of the gradient differed markedly between countries.

A single-author preprint built three sex-specific Klemera-Doubal biological-age measures from overlapping biomarker panels in 10,043-14,015 SHARE respondents aged 50-75 across 12 countries, and related them to social origin, education, income and wealth. All three measures predicted incident ADL/IADL limitation, lower cognition and mortality (mortality hazard ratios 1.44-1.92), and age acceleration was 0.076-0.107 SD lower per 1-SD higher education. In joint origin-destination models the respondent's own position carried the association while conditional parental-origin coefficients were compatible with zero, and 11 of 18 country-heterogeneity tests were significant after adjustment.

Why it is interesting: The socioeconomic gradient in a biomarker-based ageing measure holds across Europe but its steepness varies by country in a way that welfare-state or development typologies did not explain.

Source
medRxiv, 2026-09-16
DOI
10.64898/2026.09.11.26361838
Type
Preprint
Design
Cross-national cohort analysis of SHARE Wave 6 biomarkers (10,043-14,015 adults aged 50-75, 12 countries, 2015, followed to Wave 9)
Verdict
Confirms prior evidence
Driver
Inequalities in health and length of life