Association between kidney function and biological age: a China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study

Front Public Health. 2023 Dec 18:11:1259074. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1259074. eCollection 2023.

Abstract

Introduction: The chronological age (CA) cannot precisely reflect the health status. Our study aimed to establish a model of kidney biological age to evaluate kidney function more elaborately.

Methods: The modeling group was used to establish the model, consisting of 1,303 respondents of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). The biological age of the kidney (BA) was constructed by principal component analysis (PCA) and Klemera and Doubal's method (KDM) with the 1,303 health respondents.

Results: PCA was chosen as the best method for our research step by step. The test group was used to apply the model. (a) BA of the kidney can distinguish respondents with from without kidney disease. (b) BA of the kidney was significantly different in various levels of kidney function. The BA of the eGFR <60 group and 60 ≤ eGFR <90 group were older than GFR ≥90 group. (c) The group with younger BA of kidney at baseline had a lower risk of kidney function decreased. (d) The risk of decreased kidney function caused by increasing BA every additional year is higher than CA.

Discussion: The BA of the kidney is a parameter negatively correlated with decreased kidney function and fills the blank of evaluation among people in the middle of heathy and kidney diseases.

Keywords: CHARLS; aging; biological age; eGFR; kidney.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aging*
  • China
  • Humans
  • Kidney
  • Longitudinal Studies
  • Retirement*

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by a grant from the National Key R&D Program of China (grant number: 2018YFC2000200).