# Aging in 1000 healthy midlife adults: Phase 52 of the Dunedin Study

> **NIH NIH R01** · DUKE UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $82,303

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
The overarching goal of our research program is to discover why some people age earlier and faster than
others, and what might be done to prevent this. Increasingly, prevention-minded gerontologists and
geroscientists look to midlife as the life stage offering a propitious opportunity to prevent or delay the multiple
diseases that shrink older adults’ health span. But because most studies of aging have enrolled participants
well past midlife, and most studies of younger adults have not measured aging as a process of change over
time, there is surprisingly little basic knowledge about aging during midlife. Our research program uniquely fills
this gap. This is a competing renewal proposal to follow up at age 52 a cohort of all 1037 infants born in one
city in one year and exhaustively studied ever since: the Dunedin Longitudinal Study. Some cohort members
are becoming biologically older than their peers as they pass through midlife, others remain biologically
younger. The proposed follow-up will allow us to quantify how fast or slowly each cohort member is aging in
each of 8 different domains: the pace of biological aging, functional aging, facial aging, social aging, sexual
aging, inflammatory aging, microvascular aging, and cognitive aging (Aim 1A). These 8 domains are typically
studied by different scientific disciplines in silos, but we will study them together in one cohort to attract
scientific recognition to the great heterogeneity within the whole-person experience of aging. We will develop
a measure of each of the 8 kinds of aging, by modelling 3 or more waves of data on each. Three data waves
are the minimum requirement to disentangle each person’s decline (aging-related decline, how people have
changed; their slope) from their level (initial health, where people started; their intercept). Studies with fewer
than 3 waves conflate decline over the years (aging) with low scores present since earlier life (not aging). The
proposed follow-up at age 52 is necessary to add the essential 3rd midlife wave for this cohort of participants.
This follow-up will create an unprecedented unique dataset. To amplify scientific progress, we will deliver to the
research community a reliable, valid, open-access DNA-methylation version of each of the 8 new measures of
how rapidly a person has been aging (Aim 1B). To evaluate generalizability of findings for under-represented
ethnic-groups, we will export the 8 new DNA-methylation measures to Black and Latinx cohorts with
methylation, where we have established collaborations to study the pace of aging. We will further generate
new knowledge about the early-life antecedents of each kind of aging (Aim 2). We will also generate new
knowledge about the risk each of the 8 kinds of aging poses for late-life disease (Aim 3). This involves testing
the hypothesis that fast-aging individuals show compromised capacity at age 52 to mount a healthy immune
response in vitro. It also involves testing the hypo...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 11087190
- **Project number:** 3R01AG032282-13S1
- **Recipient organization:** DUKE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** AVSHALOM CASPI
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $82,303
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2009-03-01 → 2027-04-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/11087190

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 11087190, Aging in 1000 healthy midlife adults: Phase 52 of the Dunedin Study (3R01AG032282-13S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/11087190. Licensed CC0.

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