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. 2018 Mar 20:13:429-436.
doi: 10.2147/CIA.S157014. eCollection 2018.

Biological age as a health index for mortality and major age-related disease incidence in Koreans: National Health Insurance Service - Health screening 11-year follow-up study

Young Gon Kang  1 , Eunkyung Suh  2 , Jae-Woo Lee  3 , Dong Wook Kim  4 , Kyung Hee Cho  5 , Chul-Young Bae  1
Affiliations

Biological age as a health index for mortality and major age-related disease incidence in Koreans: National Health Insurance Service - Health screening 11-year follow-up study

Young Gon Kang et al. Clin Interv Aging. .

Abstract

Purpose: A comprehensive health index is needed to measure an individual's overall health and aging status and predict the risk of death and age-related disease incidence, and evaluate the effect of a health management program. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the validity of estimated biological age (BA) in relation to all-cause mortality and age-related disease incidence based on National Sample Cohort database.

Patients and methods: This study was based on National Sample Cohort database of the National Health Insurance Service - Eligibility database and the National Health Insurance Service - Medical and Health Examination database of the year 2002 through 2013. BA model was developed based on the National Health Insurance Service - National Sample Cohort (NHIS - NSC) database and Cox proportional hazard analysis was done for mortality and major age-related disease incidence.

Results: For every 1 year increase of the calculated BA and chronological age difference, the hazard ratio for mortality significantly increased by 1.6% (1.5% in men and 2.0% in women) and also for hypertension, diabetes mellitus, heart disease, stroke, and cancer incidence by 2.5%, 4.2%, 1.3%, 1.6%, and 0.4%, respectively (p<0.001).

Conclusion: Estimated BA by the developed BA model based on NHIS - NSC database is expected to be used not only as an index for assessing health and aging status and predicting mortality and major age-related disease incidence, but can also be applied to various health care fields.

Keywords: aging; biological age; comprehensive index; health.

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Conflict of interest statement

Disclosure The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.

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