People worldwide are living longer. By 2050, the world’s population aged eighty or older is expected to triple. With an ageing population, more individuals will be confronted with chronic age-related diseases, pressuring families, healthcare systems, and governments. Unravelling the underlying ageing mechanisms opens the possibility to address multiple ageing-related diseases at the same time, which can lead to the improvement of population health and reduction of age-related disease burdens to the society.
Our focus of research lies on the study of healthy ageing, lifespan, longevity and multimorbidity from various perspectives. In this project, we want to investigate socio-behavioural and genetic/familial determinants of healthy aging and longevity. A particular aspect of longevity is its familial nature. Longevity clusters in families, with research showing that mortality clusters are present in both early- and late-life. In addition, socioeconomic- and behavioural factors are also associated with human ageing and longevity and are transmitted between generations.
Currently, both genetic and behavioural studies of ageing focus mainly on unrelated individuals, ignoring the familial component as an instrument. By including familial/ancestral (mortality) data into the analysis of demographic, molecular, social, and behavioural data we will be able to improve and extend the current knowledge of how and in which context healthy ageing occurs. To this end, our research questions aim to identify:
a) To what extent health ageing is associated with genetic predisposition for chronic diseases and how familial factors can affect the relationship,
b) If chronic diseases and socio-economic factors casually affect each other as well as healthy ageing,
c) Which biological mechanisms may causally affect healthy ageing using multi-omics data to investigate socio-economic omics profiles that impact healthy ageing.
