India, Feb. 28 -- A new study has found that long periods of extreme heat can make older adults biologically age faster by upto two years.
Researchers from the University of Southern California studied blood samples from 3,686 adults, with an average age of 68, from different socioeconomic backgrounds across the U.S. They compared changes in biological aging with the number of extremely hot days in the places where participants lived.
Extreme heat was measured using the heat index, which takes both temperature and humidity into account. To understand how heat affects the body on a biological level, researchers analyzed blood samples and tracked changes in DNA. They used three biological aging markers-PcPhenoAge, PCGrimAge, and DunedinPACE...