The new concept of “exposome” is presented as the set of environmental and social factors that affect brain aging. Researchers have analyzed 73 indicators that, when combined, multiply their effect on brain health.
A study, published in the journal Nature Medicationreveals that the biological age of the brain can be accelerated or delayed depending on risk factors and environmental protectors, and the results encourage that the most significant effects occur from the interaction between environmental, social and political conditions.
The research, coordinated internationally by Agustín Ibáñez, researcher at the Global Brain Properly Being Institute (GBHI) at Trinity College Dublin, addresses how the environments in which people live (including physical and social factors) jointly influence the rate at which the human brain ages, and for this the team analyzed data from 18,701 people from 34 countries.
The concept of “exposome”
The study introduces the concept of “exposome”, understood as the cumulative set of environmental, social and contextual exposures throughout life, highlighted the Complutense University of Madrid, an institution that participated in the work.
The results showed that this “exposome” acts jointly, through the interaction of multiple factors that enhance each other, in a manner identical to what happens with diseases that coexist and that mutually aggravate each other. EFE Health.
And this set of influences determines brain aging both in healthy people and in those with neurodegenerative diseases, they emphasize.
For the research, 73 indicators of the “exposome” in Spain were analyzed, including variables such as atmospheric pollution, climate variability, the availability of green spaces, water quality, socioeconomic inequality and different aspects of the political and democratic contexts.
Conclusively, by modeling these factors together, they found that they explained up to fifteen times more variation in brain aging than any single ingredient.
No green areas, faster aging
The Complutense University reported that combined physical exposures (such as pollution, extreme temperatures or a lack of green spaces) were mainly associated with structural aging of the brain.
These alterations affect key regions involved in memory, emotional regulation and autonomic functions, and are related to mechanisms such as neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, vascular dysfunction or reduction of neurotrophic support, he adds.
They finally state that the combined social exposome (which includes factors such as inequality, poverty, low civic participation, institutional weakness or limited access to social resources) showed a greater association with functional aging of the brain, and in this case affects executive modification, social cognition and emotional regulation.
Brain aging according to geographic region
There are measurable differences in brain aging depending on geographic regions, and these are closely related to the exposome, that is, the sum of all the environmental, social and political exposures that a person accumulates throughout life.
Recent studies show that the physical and social environment of a country or region can accelerate or slow down brain aging to a degree comparable to or even greater than individual factors such as genetics or the diagnosis of a neurodegenerative disease.
What has been observed by region
- Europe shows, on average, a healthier pattern of brain aging, while Africa (e.g. Egypt and South Africa) records greater acceleration of brain aging.
- Asia and Latin America are located at an intermediate point, with important internal differences: in Latin America, the regions with greater structural economic inequality and less access to basic well-being have a higher “brain age” compared to chronological age.
- Within Europe, accelerated brain aging is more marked in eastern and southern countries, where worse social exposome indicators tend to combine (poverty, inequality, limited access to services, lower civic participation).
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