February 19, 2025

Is lifestyle or genetics more important for age-related diseases?

A new study led by researchers from Oxford Population Health at the University of Oxford has investigated whether lifestyle and other environmental factors (the ‘exposome’) have a smaller or bigger impact on health and premature death than our genes.

The study uses data from UK Biobank, and the researchers have developed a new ‘ageing clock’ – a method to estimate how quickly people are ageing biologically based on levels of proteins in their blood.  They then use this to see which environmental factors might be linked with biological ageing.

The study will be published in Nature Medicine and looks at 164 environmental factors and 22 diseases of ageing.

Journalists dialed into this briefing to hear from some of the authors of the study and to ask your questions.

Speakers included:

Prof Cornelia van Duijn, senior author of the paper and St Cross Professor of Epidemiology at Oxford Population Heath, University of Oxford

Dr Austin Argentieri, lead author of the study at Oxford Population Health, and Research Fellow at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Broad Institute