Marital Status and Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms Among Older Adults of Mexican Descent.

Little is known about the implications of marital status for the age patterning of depressive symptoms in later life. Drawing on seven waves of data from the Hispanic Established Population for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly, this research uses growth curve models to examine age trajectories of depressive symptoms among continuously married and recently and continuously widowed older adults of Mexican descent (aged 65 years and older; N = 1,452). The findings demonstrate that despite having a higher mean level of depressive symptoms, the recently widowed experienced a similar rate of increase in distress with age to that of their married counterparts. Compared with the married, the continuously widowed had a steeper rise in depressive symptoms with age, although they had fewer symptoms at younger ages in later life. Physical health, financial strain, social support, and church attendance might account to a certain extent for marital status differences in depressive symptoms across later life.

A Note on the Dependence of Health on Age and Education.

When investigating relationships between education and health, one has to take age into account. Conditioning on age entails conditioning on surviving, which has been argued to lead to a potential selection bias. In this note, I argue that surviving should be considered as a necessary precondition for the relationships of interest and, therefore, not as a possible source of bias. I criticize models of health trajectories that do not condition on surviving.

Urban health advantage or urban health penalty? Urban-rural disparities in age trajectories of physiological health among Chinese middle-aged and older women and men.

During the past decades, China has experienced rapid urbanization and aging. This study investigated sex-stratified urban-rural disparities in age trajectories of physiological health in China. We obtained data from 21686 individuals aged 45 years or above from 2011 baseline survey of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and the 2015 follow-up. It examined 11 biomarkers of physiological health classified into four summary indices: cardiovascular index, metabolic index, inflammation index, and allostatic load. This study found that the "urban health penalty" approach dominates the "urban health advantage" approach in middle and early old age, but the dominance of the "urban health penalty" approach is offset or even reversed by the "urban health advantage" approach in older age.

Age Trajectories of Physical Health Among Older Adults of Mexican Descent: Implications of Immigrant Status, Age at Immigration, and Gender.

OBJECTIVE: This study examines consequences of immigrant status, age at immigration, and gender on age trajectories of activities of daily living (ADL) limitations and chronic conditions among older adults of Mexican descent. METHOD: This research draws on 7 waves of the Hispanic Established Populations for the Epidemiologic Study of the Elderly and employs growth curve models. RESULTS: All men had similar age trajectories of ADL limitations, regardless of immigrant status and age at immigration. All women experienced steeper increases in ADL limitations, although U.S.-born women and those who immigrated by age 19 had lower initial levels. Men who immigrated between ages 20 and 49 had steeper increases in chronic conditions, despite lower initial levels. U.S.-born women and those women who immigrated by age 50 had more chronic conditions at age 65. DISCUSSION: This study highlights the multidimensional nature of physical health by demonstrating that immigrant status-gender disparities can vary by the health outcome examined.

Social participation and health over the adult life course: Does the association strengthen with age?

RATIONALE: Studies have consistently found positive associations between social participation and health, but it is unclear if they vary across the life course. Younger individuals are likely to initiate and benefit from social participation in different ways from older individuals, which may in turn alter its overall influence on health outcomes. Age-varying associations, if present, may then attenuate or amplify the health consequences stemming from changes in social participation over the adult life course. OBJECTIVE: To assess the strength of the association between social participation and health across the life course, and whether it increases with age. METHODS: I use five waves of panel data (N = 11202 person-year observations) from the Americans' Changing Lives Survey, collected over 25 years (1986-2011), to examine the association of formal and informal social participation with (1) the number of chronic health conditions and (2) depressive symptoms, focusing on whether these associations become stronger with age. Growth curve models (stratified by gender) with an accelerated longitudinal design were used to construct age trajectories of the dependent variables. An interaction term was then included to test for age-varying effects for each health outcome. RESULTS: Results show that the association between formal social participation and depressive symptoms grew stronger with age, but only for men. For women, positive associations between social participation and health were found, but seemed to remain consistent over the life course. CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that the social participation and health association over the life course is likely to be contingent on gender, the type of social participation, and the specific health outcome being considered.

Sex, Socioeconomic and Regional Disparities in Age Trajectories of Childhood BMI, Underweight and Overweight in China.

Using a longitudinal dataset from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS), growth curve models were employed to examine age trajectories of BMI for 1,694 subjects who were aged 2-11 in 1993 and followed in four waves (1997, 2000, 2004 and 2006). Based on age- and sex-specific BMI cut-points recommended for international use, the prevalence rates of overweight and underweight in the transition from childhood to adulthood (age 6-18) were also predicted. Sex, family income, rural-urban residency and geographical location were found to be significantly associated with the onsets, slopes, and acceleration of age trajectories in BMI, overweight, and underweight (P<0.01). Children who had lower prevalence of underweight in the transition from childhood to adulthood exhibited higher prevalence of overweight than their counterparts did. Moreover, the age interval during which children were more vulnerable to an increase in underweight was different from that for overweight. There were substantial regional disparities in the age trajectories of childhood overweight and underweight. Whereas the analyses suggest that the dual burden of nutritional problems (the coexistence of overweight and underweight) in China is more like two sides of a coin than two separate health issues, the critical age period for intervening in childhood overweight is different from that of childhood underweight. Geographical indicators of childhood obesity in China deserve further attention.

Relationship between wealth and age trajectories of walking speed among older adults: evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.

BACKGROUND: Slow walking speed is associated with higher risk of accidents, disability, and mortality in older adults, with people in more disadvantaged socioeconomic positions being at higher risk. We explore the relationship between wealth and age trajectories of walking speed among older adults. METHODS: Data come from three waves (2002-2003 to 2006-2007) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. We use latent growth curve models and aging-vector graphs to explore individual changes and average population age trajectories of walking speed by wealth among 7,225 individuals aged 60 and older. RESULTS: For someone aged 71 in the poorest wealth quintile, the baseline mean walking speed was 0.75 m/s, which decreased to 0.71 m/s 4 years later, whereas that of a person in the richest wealth quintile was 0.91 m/s, which decreased to 0.82 m/s. Although the decline in walking speed was faster among people in the richest wealth (net of covariates), the gaps in walking speed between richest and poorest did not close. Even after accounting for covariates, people in the richest wealth only reached critical values (0.60 m/s) of walking speed at the age of 90, whereas people in the poorest wealth reached that level 6 years earlier. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings showed continuing gaps in physical functioning by wealth, even among people with the same health, psychosocial, and demographic conditions. As wealth reflects both past and current socioeconomic status, the implications of our findings are that reducing socioeconomic inequalities at all stages of the life course may have a positive impact on functioning in old age.

How lifespan associated genes modulate aging changes: lessons from analysis of longitudinal data.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The influence of genes on human lifespan is mediated by biological processes that characterize body's functioning. The age trajectories of these processes contain important information about mechanisms linking aging, health, and lifespan. The objective of this paper is to investigate regularities of aging changes in different groups of individuals, including individuals with different genetic background, as well as their connections with health and lifespan. DATA AND METHOD: To reach this objective we used longitudinal data on four physiological variables, information about health and lifespan collected in the Framingham Heart Study (FHS), data on longevity alleles detected in earlier study, as well as methods of statistical modeling. RESULTS: We found that phenotypes of exceptional longevity and health are linked to distinct types of changes in physiological indices during aging. We also found that components of aging changes differ in groups of individuals with different genetic background. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that factors responsible for exceptional longevity and health are not necessary the same, and that postponing aging changes is associated with extreme longevity. The genetic factors which increase lifespan are associated with physiological changes typical of healthy and long-living individuals, smaller mortality risks from cancer and CVD and better estimates of adaptive capacity in statistical modeling. This indicates that extreme longevity and health related traits are likely to be less heterogeneous phenotypes than lifespan, and studying these phenotypes separately from lifespan may provide additional information about mechanisms of human aging and its relation to chronic diseases and lifespan.

Markers of brain illness may be hidden in your olfactory ability: a Japanese perspective.

There is evidence that impaired human cognitive abilities are reflected by loss of olfactory abilities. Declining olfactory perception may be a biomarker for impairment of cognitive function and of impending neurogenerative disorders. As olfactory perception may differ between culture and ethnic group, we sought to confirm this relationship with Japanese participants. In this study, we examined possible relationships between age and olfactory abilities in healthy Japanese subjects (control subjects) over a wide range of ages and compared this relationship with that observed in three neurodegenerative disorders; patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), Type 1 myotonic dystrophy (DM1) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). In control subjects, both threshold and recognition abilities decreased with age. Ability to detect odors was generally intact in most control subjects, however, we found that the abilities of individuals in the three different patient populations to recognize odors were impaired relative to control subjects. All three types of patients exhibited decreased or impaired odor-recognition compared with age-matched controls. Previous studies showed the causes of olfactory impairments in PD and AD patients were attributable to pathological changes and MRI signal abnormalities in limbic areas, including the amygdala (AMG), entorhinal cortex (ENT), hippocampus (HI), and orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Another study reported that DM1 patients have bilateral lesions in anterior temporal areas, including the subcortical white matter, AMG, ENT and insula. Our findings underscore the need to pay careful attention to significant decreases of odor identification abilities caused by diverse forms of abnormal brain function, especially in the AMG, ENT and HI.