Tobacco exposure early in life accelerates aging

The exposure to tobacco in the womb and smoking in childhood accelerates aging and the appearance of lung diseases, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

This is revealed by a study published this Friday in the journal Science Advances, resulting from analyzing blood samples from 276,000 people from the United Kingdom Biobank.

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The researchers, from Chinese and British universities, have analyzed the impact of exposure to tobacco in utero and in the first years of life (0-14 years) in relation to two variables: chronological aging, strictly associated with age , and the biological, which measures the deterioration of cells, tissues and organs.

They also examined the length of the participants’ telomeres, which are the area of ​​repetitive DNA sequences that protect the ends of a chromosome and that shorten during aging.

Seniors in advance

The results showed that people exposed to tobacco in the mother’s womb were 0.26 years older than their chronological age and 0.49 years older than their biological age, while presenting an average decrease of 5.34% in the length of their telomeres compared to an unexposed person.

Researchers have also observed a significant relationship between the age at which a person starts smoking and accelerated biological aging.

People who smoked in childhood, from 5 to 14 years old, are older than their chronological age by 0.88 years, and their biological age by 2.51 years, while the length of their telomeres is 10 .53% lower than the average.

Accelerated aging

The worst unemployed are those who were exposed to tobacco within the mother’s womb and who also smoked in childhood: they are 1.13 years older than their chronological age and 2.89 years older than their biological age.

“The joint result of intrauterine exposure to tobacco and the onset of smoking in childhood is extremely biological aging,” underlines one of the authors, Feipeng Cui, a researcher at the Chinese University of Huazhong.

“The result highlights the important benefits of quitting smoking at an early age, regardless of genetic background, to resist biological aging and prevent diseases related to it,” he adds.

Considering that smoking increases the risk of chronic diseases and death later in life, researchers deduce that exposure to tobacco in the first years of life accelerates the onset of lung diseases, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer .

Source: Elcomercio

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