ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
In utero exposure to the Great Depression is reflected in late-life epigenetic aging signatures.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers.
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Who cites it
33 citing papers in PubMed, 58 citations in OpenAlex.
- Effects of a randomized controlled trial of unconditional cash transfers on epigenetic measures of ageing and cognition in children and mothers.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Early-life nutritional environment is associated with late-life cognition in the Health and Retirement Study, a pellagra epidemic natural experiment.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Social determinants of health and epigenetic clocks: a systematic review and meta-analysis of 140 studies.Nature human behaviour · 2026Article
- Early-life local labor market conditions and old-age male mortality: evidence from deindustrialization of New England textile sector.Journal of demographic economics · 2026Article
- Developmental origins of exceptional health and survival: a four-generation family cohort study.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Prenatal exposure to genocide accelerates epigenetic aging in third- and fourth-generation clocks among young adults in Rwanda.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- Pace of Aging analysis of healthspan and lifespan in older adults in the US and UK.Nature aging · 2025Article
- Epigenetic biomarkers of socioeconomic status are associated with age-related chronic diseases and mortality in older adults.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- DNA methylation in mammalian development and disease.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2025Review
- The effects of parental education on male mortality: evidence from the first wave of compulsory schooling laws.Journal of population economics · 2025Article
- Pace of Aging in older adults matters for healthspan and lifespan.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2024Article
- Sociodemographic and Lifestyle Factors and Epigenetic Aging in US Young Adults: NIMHD Social Epigenomics Program.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- Epigenetic Aging and Racialized, Economic, and Environmental Injustice: NIMHD Social Epigenomics Program.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- Accelerated biological aging six decades after prenatal famine exposure.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- New Directions in Geroscience: Integrating Social and Behavioral Drivers of Biological Aging.Psychosomatic medicine · 2024Review
- Severe drought exposure in utero associates to children's epigenetic age acceleration in a global climate change hot spot.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Deriving life-course residential histories in brain bank cohorts: A feasibility study.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2024Article
- Article
- A blood biomarker of the pace of aging is associated with brain structure: replication across three cohorts.Neurobiology of aging · 2024Article
- Utilizing epigenetics to study the shared nature of development and biological aging across the lifespan.NPJ science of learning · 2024Review
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2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
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Abstract
Research on maternal-fetal epigenetic programming argues that adverse exposures to the intrauterine environment can have long-term effects on adult morbidity and mortality. However, causal research on epigenetic programming in humans at a population level is rare and is often unable to separate intrauterine effects from conditions in the postnatal period that may continue to impact child development. In this study, we used a quasi-natural experiment that leverages state-year variation in economic shocks during the Great Depression to examine the causal effect of environmental exposures in early life on late-life accelerated epigenetic aging for 832 participants in the US Health and Retirement Study (HRS). HRS is the first population-representative study to collect epigenome-wide DNA methylation data that has the sample size and geographic variation necessary to exploit quasi-random variation in state environments, which expands possibilities for causal research in epigenetics. Our findings suggest that exposure to changing economic conditions in the 1930s had lasting impacts on next-generation epigenetic aging signatures that were developed to predict mortality risk (GrimAge) and physiological decline (DunedinPoAm). We show that these effects are localized to the in utero period specifically as opposed to the preconception, postnatal, childhood, or early adolescent periods. After evaluating endogenous shifts in mortality and fertility related to Depression-era birth cohorts, we conclude that these effects likely represent lower bound estimates of the true impacts of the economic shock on long-term epigenetic aging.
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