ArticleSSM - population health2026
Association between helping behaviors and epigenetic aging: Findings from the United States and Northern Ireland.
Article in SSM - population health, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Background: Prosocial behaviors such as volunteering and informal helping have been associated with positive health outcomes, but their links with biological aging remain underexplored, particularly across cultural contexts. The United States and Northern Ireland provide distinct social and institutional contexts for helping behaviors, allowing us to examine whether associations between volunteering, informal helping, and biological aging are context-specific or consistent across settings. Methods: Using data from the 2014 and 2016 waves of the Health and Retirement Study (U.S.) and the 2016 wave of its family study, the Northern Ireland Cohort for the Longitudinal Study of Aging (NICOLA), we examined the associations between formal volunteering and informal helping and five epigenetic clocks: Horvath, Hannum, PhenoAge, GrimAge, and DunedinPACE. Results: In the U.S., moderate engagement (1-99 h/year) in both formal and informal helping was associated with decelerated epigenetic aging, especially for PhenoAge, GrimAge, and DunedinPACE, which are designed to capture morbidity- and mortality-related biological aging and physiological decline. However, high levels of informal helping (200+ hours/year) were linked to accelerated aging, suggesting possible stress or role strain. Formal volunteering exhibited consistent protective effects, even at higher frequencies. In Northern Ireland, volunteering 1-4 h/week was linked to decelerated GrimAge, a mortality-related epigenetic aging measure, with no significant associations for other clocks. Cultural patterns also emerged: Americans were more likely to participate in formal volunteering, while Irish participants engaged more in informal helping. Conclusion: These findings highlight the nuanced, context-dependent associations between helping behaviors and biological aging and suggest that the health benefits of helping others depend on the type, intensity, and cultural context of engagement.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.