According scientists, people who leave education with fewer qualifications are prone to age more quickly. The research was published in the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity on Wednesday.
Researchers from Britain and the United States looked at the length of sections of DNA known as telomeres from around 450 people taking part in a long-term health study and found that people who did less well at school had shorter telomeres, suggesting they may age faster. These telomeres are sections of DNA that cap the ends of chromosomes, protecting them from damage and the loss of cell functions associated with aging. Shorter telomeres are thought to be an indicator of faster aging.
“The key implication of this study backs up one of the main messages to have come out of long-term studies…that your experiences early in life can have important influences on your health,” said Stephen Holgate, of Britain's Medical Research Council, which part-funded the research. He added that as with all observational research, it was difficult to establish the causes of these findings, but said the study provided evidence “that being educated to a higher level can benefit you more than in the job market alone.”
The participants in the current study were civil servants taking part in the Whitehall II cohort study, a large, ongoing research study looking at various aspects of health in over 10,000 UK civil servants. A subset of 506 healthy male and female participants aged 53 to 76 years old provided information on their educational history, current SES, and gave blood samples. The blood samples were used to obtain a particular type of white blood cell that could then be tested for two characteristics relating to the telomeres. The researchers divided the participants into four education groups: those who had no qualifications at all, those who left formal education after exams at around 16 years of age, those who left after exams at around 18 years, and those who earned a degree from a university or other higher education institution.
The results revealed that people with lower educational achievements had shorter telomeres, indicating that they may age faster, and the study also offered strong evidence that this is not affected by people's social and economic status later in life, as was previously thought, the researchers said. “We already know from previous research that people with poor backgrounds are prone to age more quickly,” said study researcher Andrew Steptoe, of University College London. “Education is a marker of social class that people acquire early in life, and our research suggests that it is long term exposure to the conditions of lower status that promotes accelerated cellular aging,” he said.
“This study found that lower academic attainment is associated with premature aging of cells in the body. It reinforces the need to tackle social inequalities to combat ill health. It's not acceptable that where you live or how much you earn -- or lesser academic attainment -- should put you at greater risk of ill health,” said Jeremy Pearson, the foundation's associate medical director.
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