ECHO Project’s presence at the PAA 2023 Annual Meeting from April 12-15 2023, New Orleans, Louisiana

ECHO Project was present at the PAA 2023 Annual Meeting, event organised by the Population Association of America that took place at New Orleans, Louisiana, from 12-15 April.

The PAA Annual Meeting is for anyone with professional interests in population research or the application of the knowledge generated through scientific study:

  • Demographers
  • Sociologists
  • Economists
  • Public Health Professionals
  • Students
  • Policymakers and Media

ECHO researchers participated through sessions and posters’ presentations. Thus, postdoc researcher Daniel Ramírez presented several papers on:

“Early-Life Imprints of Behavioral Risks on Biological Age Acceleration”

Current research shows that exposure to and participation in behavioral risks like smoking and drinking can increase DNA methylation (and in turn, biological age acceleration). Yet, little is known about whether these early-life exposures cause lasting changes in biological aging or if they operate through continued participation in behavioral risks in adulthood. In this study, we examine whether exposure to cigarette smoke, alcohol, and drugs in early life is more compatible with a critical period model (i.e., an “imprinting” effect) or a cumulative hazards model (i.e., continued engagement in behavioral risks) with regard to biological aging. The findings suggest that childhood smoking has the greatest impacts and are consistent with both models. Half of the effect of early-life smoking fits the critical periods model, whereas the other half fits the cumulative hazards model (operating via further engagement in behavioral risks).

“You Are What Your Parents Ate: A Study on the Intergenerational Effects of Famine Exposure on Cardiometabolic Health in Later Life”.

Using a unique dataset that combines large nationally representative health surveys with population registries from the Netherlands, this study examines the Dutch Hunger Winter case study to investigate the effects of in-utero exposure to famine on obesity and other cardiometabolic conditions across generations. The results of the study show individuals with fathers exposed to famine during their first trimester of gestation are more likely to be classified in the obese BMI category, as well as ever being diagnosed with a cardiometabolic condition besides obesity (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, stroke, or high blood pressure). We find no evidence supporting the notion that exposure to famine while in-utero leads to higher risks in the offspring via maternal exposure. Furthermore, we find no differences in increased risk for male or female offspring.

Diego Ramiro presented the joinlty study with Dariya Ordanovich on “The Burden of Heat-Related Mortality in Madrid: A Hundred-Year Journey”:

The number of studies exploring the evolution of adaptation to heat and relying on multidecadal time-series data in Spain at any administrative level is very limited. The present research is the first one to leverage daily mortality and temperature data in the city of Madrid since the end of the XIX century until today. We examined the patterns of adaptation to extreme heat in Madrid from 1890 until 2020 using daily data on air temperature received from the meteorological stations and all-cause mortality from yearly books and civil registers. Using a distributed-lag nonlinear modelling approach we explored the complex heat-mortality relations and estimated the changes in the adaptation metrics by decade and demographic strata. The results reveal a non-uniform change in the temperature-mortality relationship over time with an overall decrease of 1 degree. The attributable fractions reduced, especially for colder tempeatures, while for the extreme heat the reduction was minimal.

Also, ECHO collaborator, Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez was invited to a session on “Population-level Impact of Adverse Early Life Conditions in Older Adult Healthy Life Expectancy in Mexico and Other Low- and Middle-Income Countries” and presented his studies on “Mortality and Sample Attrition in the Mexican Health and Aging Study, 2001–2015” and on “Population-level Impact of Adverse Early Life Conditions in Older Adult Healthy Life Expectancy in Mexico and Other Low- and Middle-Income Countries”.

Regarding the posters, attendees could enjoy the following related to ECHO:

  • “Can Epigenetic Clocks Better Capture Childhood Insults? Testing the “GrimAge” Algorithm” by Aitor García
  • “Temporal Variation of the Temperature-Mortality Association in Spain” by Dariya Ordanovich

The PAA 2023 Annual Meeting was a great opportunity to present to the scientific community the achievements and progress made within ECHO project. 

Daniel Ramírez Smith presenting jointly study with Alberto Palloni on “You Are What Your Parents Ate: A Study on the Intergenerational Effects of Famine Exposure on Cardiometabolic Health in Later Life” (April 15, PAA 2023)

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