Social Connection and Epigenetic Aging: Insights from DNA Methylation Clocks
Feifei Bu, Daisy Fancourt · 2026
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Description
Feifei Bu and Daisy Fancourt studied how social connection relates to biological aging in older adults, in work published in 2026. They used data from more than two thousand people in a national retirement study. Aging was read from chemical marks on DNA that act as clocks.
Being socially isolated at the start was linked to faster aging on two kinds of clocks ten years later. Loneliness linked only to the newer clocks. People who were at once isolated, lonely, and in poor quality relationships aged fastest of all. Long runs of isolation over time mattered most, while early loneliness showed the strongest ties. The authors stress that social health spans several domains and builds up over time.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Feifei Bu, Daisy Fancourt |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 36 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |