RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 An integrative study of five biological clocks in somatic and mental health JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 2020.06.11.146498 DO 10.1101/2020.06.11.146498 A1 Jansen, Rick A1 Verhoeven, Josine A1 Han, Laura KM A1 Aberg, Karolina A A1 van den Oord, Edwin CGJ A1 Milaneschi, Yuri A1 Penninx, Brenda WJH YR 2020 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/06/12/2020.06.11.146498.abstract AB Biological clocks have been developed at different molecular levels and were found to be more advanced in the presence of somatic illnesses and mental disorders. However, it is unclear whether different biological clocks reflect similar aging processes and determinants. In ~3000 subjects, we examined whether 5 biological clocks (telomere length, epigenetic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic clocks) were interrelated and associated to somatic and mental health determinants. Correlations between biological clocks were small (all r<0.2), indicating little overlap. The most consistent associations with the advanced biological clocks were found for male sex, higher BMI, metabolic syndrome, smoking and depression. As compared to the individual clocks, a composite index of all five clocks showed most pronounced associations with health determinants. The large effect sizes of the composite index and the low correlation between biological clocks, indicate that one’s biological age is best reflected by combining aging measures from multiple cellular levels.