Neighborhood Disadvantage, Environmental Justice, Mental Well-Being and Epigenetic Markers of Biological Aging Across Urban and Rural Context

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Recently neighborhood disadvantage research shows increasing evidence for a potential link of altered age-related patterns of between place and health. However, the mechanisms, including mental health and stress are less well understood and, few, if any of these studies integrate chemical pollutants into their assessment of neighborhood disadvantage. As such, it is uncertain the role that environmental exposures may play in exacerbating or mediating these associations. Further, most, if not all studies are examining associations in largely urban environments. The goals of this presentation are to examine how context, race and social determinants intersect to shape mental health, unequal environmental exposures and accelerated biological aging in diverse population. METHODS: Principal components analyses were used to generate urban and rural specific metrics of residential disadvantage and correlated with land use regression-based air pollution modeled data and drinking water source. Associations with three different epigenetic clocks (e.g. PhenoAge, GrimAge) and epigenome wide association analyses (EWAS) were conducted to identify specific mechanisms by which disadvantage correlates with disadvantage relative to environmental exposures and potential mediation by mental health. RESULTS:In a region of the United States with extreme historical neighborhood segregation and structural racism, urban metrics of neighborhood disadvantage are highly correlated with air pollution exposures (p.001). In rural context, private well water and filter use are correlated. Neighborhood stress, 3 + experiences of everyday discrimination, current smoking and body mass index are the strongest predictors of accelerated aging (p.001) in univariate analyses. In adjusted analyses, experiences of discrimination are no longer significant. CONCLUSIONS:More work is needed to better understand urban rural differences in neighborhood disadvantage. Neighborhood perceptions of disadvantage are more predictive of accelerated epigenetic “clocks” than census derived metrics, suggesting that mental health and well-being play important roles in biological aging. KEYWORDS: Methods, Environmental Justice Omics, Epigenomics