Living in a Bad Neighbourhood Could Add a Decade to Your Age

New research from the University of Pittsburgh has found a link between neighbourhood quality and cellular aging.

Regardless of the chronological age, people who live in neighbourhoods with high crime, noise, and vandalism are biologically more than a decade older than those who do not, according to the study. The findings were published online in PLOS One. The research shows that living in disadvantaged neighbourhoods also has an unfavourable impact on mental and physical health.

“Our team examined whether these environments also have a direct impact on cellular health," explained lead author Mijung Park, Ph.D., M.P.H., R.N., assistant professor, University of Pittsburgh School of Nursing. “We found that indeed, biological aging processes could be influenced by socioeconomic conditions.”

The research team focused on telomeres, which are stretches of DNA at the ends of chromosomes that often are compared to caps on shoelaces because they protect the DNA strands from damage.

“Telomeres get trimmed each time the cell divides because they are not fully copied by enzyme mechanisms, and it is thought that aging occurs when the telomeres become too short for DNA replication and cell division to proceed normally. Telomere shortening can be accelerated with exposure to biological or psychological stresses such as cancer, anxiety and depression,” Park said.

Working with researchers from Amsterdam, the team examined telomere length in white blood cells of 2,902 Dutch individuals participating in the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety and determined the quality of the neighbourhoods in which they resided using measures of perceived neighbourhood disorder, fear of crime, and noise. They found that the telomeres of people reporting poor neighbourhood quality were significantly shorter than telomeres of those who did not.