Thesis
Investigating pace of biological aging as a mental and physical health biomarker in youth with perinatally-acquired HIV
Master of Science (M.S.), Drexel University
Jan 2024
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17918/00001911
Abstract
HIV and its treatment may affect the growth and development of organ function and the mental health of youth who are living with perinatally-acquired HIV (PHIV). Recent research has investigated utilizing biological age as a biomarker that can accurately predict a broad range of health outcomes such as physical functioning, multimorbidity, cognitive functioning, and even mortality in adults. However, few studies have utilized a longitudinal approach to analyze biological age in targeted populations such as those with PHIV. Even fewer studies have investigated the trends of biological aging in children since most biological aging algorithms have been developed with an older population in mind. To fill the gap, our study aims to examine the pattern of biological aging over time in youth with PHIV. We propose a new approach to quantify the pace of biological aging as a weighted combination of the temporal trajectory of each individual biomarker. The resulting metric is called individualized pace of biological aging (iPoA). Compared to existing methods such as pace of biological aging (PoA), and biological age gap (BAG), our proposed iPoA allows researchers to effectively account for each participant's baseline health condition. Our results show that iPoA was significantly associated with HIV viral load and change in HIV viral load over time in children, outperforming previously validated biological aging and pace of aging methods. Furthermore, iPoA was significantly related to mental quality of life, showing a slower pace of biological aging with a lower mental quality of life score. Additionally, we found a significant interaction effect between iPoA and sex in both mental and physical quality of life, revealing that males may experience more adverse health outcomes due to accelerated biological development relative to females who experience more adverse health outcomes with delayed biological development.
Metrics
65 File views/ downloads
24 Record Views
Details
- Title
- Investigating pace of biological aging as a mental and physical health biomarker in youth with perinatally-acquired HIV
- Creators
- Hansoo Chang
- Contributors
- Fengqing Zhang (Advisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Drexel University
- Degree Awarded
- Master of Science (M.S.)
- Publisher
- Drexel University; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
- Number of pages
- 57 pages
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences (Psychology); College of Arts and Sciences; Drexel University
- Other Identifier
- 991021823113304721