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Does renting speed up biological aging? Latest study sparks housing policy debate

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Does renting speed up biological aging? Latest study sparks housing policy debate

The biological impact of renting, versus owner occupancy, is sort of double that of being out of labor vs having paid employment, the findings suggest.

Fortunately, these effects are reversible, emphasizing the importance of housing policy in health improvement, say the researchers.

Quite a few features of housing are related to physical and mental health, including cold, mold, crowding, injury hazards, stress, and stigma. But exactly how they may exert their effects is not entirely clear, say the researchers. 

Study: Are housing circumstances related to faster epigenetic ageing?. Image Credit: ADragan / Shutterstock

To explore this further, they drew on epigenetic information alongside social survey data and signs of biological aging captured through evidence of DNA methylation in blood samples.

Epigenetics describes how behaviors and environmental aspects may cause changes that alter how genes work, while DNA methylation is a chemical modification of DNA that may alter gene expression.

They used data from the representative UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS, normally known as Understanding Society) and survey responses from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), which also became a part of Understanding Society. 

They mined the knowledge available within the UKHLS on material elements of housing: tenure, constructing type, government financial support available to renters, presence of central heating as a proxy for adequate warmth, and placement in an urban or rural area. Psychosocial elements were also included housing costs, payment arrears, overcrowding, and moving expectations and preferences.

Additional health information was subsequently collected from the 1420 BHPS survey respondents, and blood samples were taken for DNA methylation evaluation. Information on historical housing circumstances was gleaned by pooling each respondent’s responses from the past ten years of the BHPS survey.

When analyzing all the information, the researchers accounted for potentially influential aspects: sex, nationality, education level, socioeconomic status, weight-reduction plan, cumulative stress, financial hardship, urban environments, weight (BMI), and smoking. Since the pace of biological aging quickens in tandem with chronological aging, this was also factored in. 

The evaluation showed that living in a privately rented home was related to faster biological aging. What’s more, the impact of renting within the private sector, versus outright ownership (with no mortgage), was almost double that of being out of labor reasonably than being employed. It was also 50% greater than having been a former smoker versus never having smoked. 

When historical housing circumstances were added to the combination, repeated housing arrears and exposure to pollution/environmental problems were also related to faster biological aging.

Living in social housing, nevertheless, with its lower cost and greater security of tenure, was no different than outright ownership when it comes to its association with biological aging once additional housing variables were included.

That is an observational study, and as such, cannot establish cause. And the researchers acknowledge several limitations to their findings. For instance, there have been no contemporary measures of housing quality, and the DNA methylation data got here only from White European respondents. 

But they conclude: “Our results suggest that difficult housing circumstances negatively affect health through faster biological ageing. Nonetheless, biological ageing is reversible, highlighting the numerous potential for housing policy changes to enhance health.”

They suggest that their findings are likely relevant to housing and health elsewhere, particularly in countries with similar housing policies.

“What it means to be a non-public renter will not be set in stone but depending on policy decisions, which up to now have prioritised owners and investors over renters,” they add. 

“Policies to scale back the stress and uncertainty related to private renting, comparable to ending ‘no-fault’ (Section 21) evictions, limiting rent increases, and improving conditions (a few of which have happened in parts of the UK since these data were collected) may go some approach to reducing the negative impacts of personal renting.”

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