Accelerating research on biological aging and mental health: Current challenges and future directions.

Han LKM, Verhoeven JE, Tyrka AR, Penninx BWJH, Wolkowitz OM, Månsson KNT, Lindqvist D, Boks MP, Révész D, Mellon SH, Picard M

Psychoneuroendocrinology 106 (-) 293-311 [2019-08-00; online 2019-04-05]

Aging is associated with complex biological changes that can be accelerated, slowed, or even temporarily reversed by biological and non-biological factors. This article focuses on the link between biological aging, psychological stressors, and mental illness. Rather than comprehensively reviewing this rapidly expanding field, we highlight challenges in this area of research and propose potential strategies to accelerate progress in this field. This effort requires the interaction of scientists across disciplines - including biology, psychiatry, psychology, and epidemiology; and across levels of analysis that emphasize different outcome measures - functional capacity, physiological, cellular, and molecular. Dialogues across disciplines and levels of analysis naturally lead to new opportunities for discovery but also to stimulating challenges. Some important challenges consist of 1) establishing the best objective and predictive biological age indicators or combinations of indicators, 2) identifying the basis for inter-individual differences in the rate of biological aging, and 3) examining to what extent interventions can delay, halt or temporarily reverse aging trajectories. Discovering how psychological states influence biological aging, and vice versa, has the potential to create novel and exciting opportunities for healthcare and possibly yield insights into the fundamental mechanisms that drive human aging.

PubMed 31154264

DOI 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2019.04.004

Crossref 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2019.04.004

mid: NIHMS1530594
pmc: PMC6589133
pii: S0306-4530(18)30922-3