Prevalence and Social Inequality in Youth Loneliness in the UK.

Using data from the English arm of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, we examined the prevalence of loneliness for school-aged adolescents and how it is linked to social inequalities. The HBSC study collects data from 11-, 13-, and 15-year-olds, and is repeated every four years, allowing the exploration of prevalence rates of loneliness pre COVID-19 pandemic for comparison. We also explored whether loneliness was associated with socio-economic status (SES) and linked to academic attainment and health complaints. The total sample was 14,077 from 156 schools in England. Findings revealed a stable prevalence rate of 8.2% for loneliness from 2006 to 2014. We also found, across all survey years, (1) those aged 15 years were significantly lonelier than younger peers, (2) those who reported lower SES were lonelier than their more well-off peers, and (3) higher loneliness was associated with being '"below average" academically and reporting more health complaints. Conclusions: These prevalence data enable researchers, policymakers, and others to make comparisons with prevalence rates during the COVID-19 pandemic to explore whether there have been increases in loneliness among school-aged adolescents. Loneliness was consistently related to social inequalities, suggesting that targeted interventions that include whole systems changes are needed

A REPORT BY THE ALL - PARTY PARLIAMENTARY GROUP ON A FIT AND HEALTHY CHILDHOOD THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC INEQUALITIES ON CHILDREN’S HEALTH

A child born into circumstances of social and economic inequality in the 21st century United Kingdom will start life with one hand tied behind their back. Nowhere is the disparity of experience more marked than in that of health and this, in turn, impacts the entire life course. In the same way that priority is given to securing the national infrastructure, prioritising the health of children from all areas and in all circumstances from the outset would therefore seem to be prudent rather than profligate. Yet as this Report demonstrates,successive Governments have skimped rather thansaved; failedto build upon existing policy and played a costly policy game of ‘catching up later’ instead of deploying the early ntervention me asures that are cheaper andmore effective in the long term

The Mitigating Role of Ecological Health Assets in Adolescent Cyberbullying Victimization

Over the last decade cyberbullying has emerged as a public health concern among young people. Cyberbullying refers to intentional harmful behaviours and communication carried out repeatedly using electronic media. Considerable research has demonstrated the detrimental and long-lasting effects of cyberbullying involvement. This paper draws on a social-ecological perspective to identify protective health assets from across the multiple environmental domains of the adolescent that may mitigate against experiencing cyberbullying. Data were collected from 5335 students aged 11, 13 and 15 years who participated in the 2014 World Health Organization Health Behaviour in School-aged Children Study for England. Protective health assets were identified at the family (family communication), school (school sense of belonging and teacher support) and neighbourhood (neighbourhood sense of belonging) levels. In particular the findings draw attention to the protective role fathers can play in supporting young people

Trajectories of inflammatory biomarkers over the eighth decade and their associations with immune cell profiles and epigenetic ageing

Background: Epigenetic age acceleration (an older methylation age compared to chronological age) correlates strongly with various age-related morbidities and mortality. Chronic systemic inflammation is thought to be a hallmark of ageing, but the relationship between an increased epigenetic age and this likely key phenotype of ageing has not yet been extensively investigated. Methods: We modelled the trajectories of the inflammatory biomarkers C-reactive protein (CRP; measured using both a high- and low-sensitivity assay) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) over the eighth decade in the Lothian Birth Cohort 1936. Using linear mixed models, we investigated the association between CRP and immune cell profiles imputed from the methylation data and examined the cross-sectional and longitudinal association between the inflammatory biomarkers and two measures of epigenetic age acceleration, derived from the Horvath and Hannum epigenetic clocks. Results: We found that low-sensitivity CRP declined, high-sensitivity CRP did not change, and IL-6 increased over time within the cohort. CRP levels inversely associated with CD8+T cells and CD4+T cells and positively associated with senescent CD8+T cells, plasmablasts and granulocytes. Cross-sectionally, the Hannum, but not the Horvath, measure of age acceleration was positively associated with each of the inflammatory biomarkers, including a restricted measure of CRP (≤ 10 mg/L) likely reflecting levels relevant to chronic inflammation. Conclusions: We found a divergent relationship between inflammation and immune system parameters in older age. We additionally report the Hannum measure of epigenetic age acceleration associated with an elevated inflammatory profile cross-sectionally, but not longitudinally

Detection of a novel, integrative aging process suggests complex physiological integration

Abstract: Many studies of aging examine biomarkers one at a time, but complex systems theory and network theory suggest that interpretations of individual markers may be context-dependent. Here, we attempted to detect underlying processes governing the levels ofmany biomarkers simultaneously by applying principal components analysis to 43 common clinical biomarkers measured longitudinally in 3694 humans from three longitudinal cohort studies on two continents (Women’s Health and Aging I & II, InCHIANTI, and the Baltimore Longitudinal Study on Aging). The first axis was associated with anemia, inflammation, and low levels of calcium and albumin. The axis structure was precisely reproduced in all three populations and in all demographic sub-populations (by sex, race, etc.); we call the process represented by the axis “integrated albunemia.” Integrated albunemia increases and accelerates with age in all populations, and predicts mortality and frailty – but not chronic disease – even after controlling for age. This suggests a role in the aging process, though causality is not yet clear. Integrated albunemia behaves more stably across populations than its component biomarkers, and thus appears to represent a higher-order physiological process emerging from the structure of underlying regulatory networks. If this is correct, detection of this process has substantial implications for physiological organizationmore generally