According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Hispanic population in the United States has an average life expectancy of 81.6 years.
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The epigenetic clock found that the Tsimane aged even more slowly than Latinos.
Researchers found Hispanics have slower blood aging than other ethnic groups, which may explain their longer lifespan. “Scientists refer to this as the ‘Hispanic paradox, ‘” Horvath said.
A UCLA study of seven ethnic groups concluded that Latinos age more slowly than the other ethnic groups analyzed.
According to the team, no previous studies have estimated and compared molecular aging rates among different genders or racial/ethnic groups using epigenetic measures. The researchers also used an epigentic clock developed by Horvath to track aging in the genome. Epigenetics is the study of changes to the DNA molecule that influence which genes are active but don’t alter the DNA sequence itself.
Those participants included not only black, white and Latino Americans but also Han Chinese, members of the Tsimane Amerindian tribe in South America and two separate groups of Central Africans: rain-forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers and agrarians living in grasslands and open savannas. To do so, Mr. Horvath and his colleagues analyzed blood, saliva and lymphoblastoid samples collected from 5,162 participants in a wide range of studies.
The findings could lead to a greater understanding of the epigenetic changes – external factors influencing our DNA – that affect why all of us age differently, as well as solving a long-standing mystery over how Latinos enjoy such longevity in the face of greater susceptibility to certain health issues.
“We suspect that Latinos’ slower ageing rate helps neutralise their higher health risks, particularly those related to obesity and inflammation”, says Horvath.
One example given by the team describes how, after menopause, the epigenetic clock suggests that Latino women’s bodies are actually 2.4 years younger in biological terms than non-Latino women of the same calendar age.
Specifically, they found that cells in the blood of Hispanic and Tsimane populations aged more slowly than those of other ethnic groups. The biological clock calculated the age of their blood as two years younger than Hispanics and four years younger than whites.
“Despite frequent infections, the Tsimane people show every little evidence of the chronic disease [DISEASES?] that commonly afflict modern society”, Michael Gurven, study coauthor and a professor of anthropology at University of California, Santa Barbara, said in the news release.
The black-white mortality crossover – that after age 85, black men and women have a pattern of lower mortality that white people, despite higher patterns at younger ages – was not explained by the study, though the researchers say other differences in blood and cell aging may have something to do with it. Those findings, too, may help explain longstanding observations that stir curiosity: that despite suffering more illness, women statistically live longer than men, and that more education is linked to longer lifespan.
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Researchers next plan to study the aging rate of other human tissues and to identify the molecular mechanism that protects Latinos from aging.
