Abstract
Aim
To investigate the relationships between healthy lifestyles, longevity genetics, and major chronic noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and death, and to estimate life expectancy and years of life gained at age of 60 years.
Subject and methods
A prospective cohort with a total of 317,552 participants without NCDs at recruitment was obtained from UK Biobank. Cox proportional hazards models were used to examine the associations of lifestyle score (HLS), polygenic risk score (PRS) for longevity, and their combinations with incident NCDs or all-cause mortality. Flexible parametric survival models were applied to predict both total and healthy life expectancy and years of life gained.
Results
During a median follow-up of 11.80 years, 76,833 incident cases of NCDs (24.2%) and 14,526 deaths (4.6%) occurred. At the age of 60 years, participants with both high HLS and high PRS could expect 3.93 (3.38, 4.47) and 4.72 (4.37, 5.06) years respectively of total and healthy life gained. Quitting smoking showed the largest benefits among various lifestyles. Women could gain greater benefits than men when they had higher scores.
Conclusion
Our study indicates that engaging in healthier lifestyles (especially a non-smoking lifestyle) brought a much greater level of benefits than PRS. The combinations of higher HLS and PRS could expect longer life expectancy and years of life gained. We must maintain and improve healthy lifestyles to prolong our health.
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Data availability
This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank Resource, under application 69550. All data used in this study are available through registration on the UK Biobank.
Abbreviations
- NCDs:
-
noncommunicable diseases
- HLS:
-
healthy lifestyle score
- PRS:
-
polygenic risk score
- LE:
-
life expectancy
- HLE:
-
healthy life expectancy
- BMI:
-
body mass index
- WHR:
-
waist-to-hip ratio
- SNP:
-
single nucleotide polymorphisms
- ICD:
-
International Classification of Disease
- IPAQ:
-
International Physical Activity Questionnaire
- COVID-19:
-
coronavirus disease 2019
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Acknowledgments
This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank Resource, under application 69550. The authors wish to thank the UK Biobank participants and coordinators for this unique dataset.
Funding
This work was supported, in whole or in part, by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (grant number: INV-016826 to Hualiang Lin).
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Rui Li: conceptualization, methodology, writing — original draft; Chuanbo Xie: revision, methodology, writing — review and editing; Lan Chen, Miao Cai, and Xiaojie Wang: methodology, software; Chongjian Wang, Zilong Zhang, and Junjie Hua: methodology, supervision; Haitao Li: data curation; Hualiang Lin: conceptualization, supervision, writing — review and editing. Rui Li and Chuanbo Xie prepared the manuscript, and all authors provided critical revisions. All authors had full access to the data and responsibility for the decision to submit for publication.
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The UK Biobank received ethics approval from the North West Multicenter Research Ethics Committee (reference number 11/NW/03820). All participants gave written informed consent before enrolment in the study, which was conducted in accord with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki.
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Li, R., Xie, C., Chen, L. et al. Healthy lifestyle and longevity genetics associated with healthy life expectancy and years of life gained at age of 60 years: A prospective cohort study. J Public Health (Berl.) (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-023-02074-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10389-023-02074-1