Our lifestyles, living conditions and other environmental factors have a greater impact on health and the possibility of premature death than our genes. This is found, led by the Oxford Population Health research center, published in Nature Medicine.

The researchers used data of nearly half a million participants in the UK Biobank to evaluate the effect of 164 environmental parameters and genetic risks for 22 major diseases in aging, age -related diseases.

They found that environmental factors explained 17% of the risk of death risk compared to less than 2% explained by genetic predisposition.

Out of the 25 independent environmental factors identified, the smokingthe socio -economic situationthe physical activity and the living conditions They had the greatest impact on mortality and biological aging. Smoking was associated with 21 diseases, socio -economic factors, such as household income, home ownership and employment, were linked to 19 diseases, while physical activity was associated with 17 diseases.

Twenty -three of the factors found are amendable. Interesting is the fact that factors in early life, such as body weight at the age of ten or Mother’s smoking near birthseemed to affect aging and risk of premature death 30-80 years later.

Also environmental factors had a greater effect on lungsher heart and his liverwhile the genetic risk dominated the dementia and breast cancer.

The authors used a unique aging measure to watch how fast people age, using blood protein levels. This allowed them to link environmental reports to biological aging. This method had in the past shown that it detects age -related changes in two other large population studies from China and Finland.

The research also shows that while many of the individual reports found had a small role in premature death, the combined impact of these multiple reports during life (referred to as exposome, report) explained a large proportion of her probability of premature death. Researchers note that knowledge from this study paves the way for comprehensive strategies to improve the health of aging populations, identifying key combinations of environmental factors that shape the risk of premature death and many age -related diseases.

Professor Cornelia Van Dunne, Professor of Epidemiology at “Oxford Population Health” and the main author of the study, points out that “There are many questions that still need to be answered, related to nutrition, lifestyle and exposure to new pathogenic microorganisms (such as bird flu and Covid-19) and chemicals (such as pesticides and plastics), and the impact of environmental and genetic factors on different populations. “