Archives of Medical Research · Jul 17, 2026

Association between Physical Activity and Accelerated Aging Using S-Anthropoage: A Secondary Analysis of the Mexican Health and Aging Study

By Fernandez-Villa JM, González-Lara M, Bello-Chavolla OY et al.

BACKGROUND: Aging clocks estimate biological age (BA) using different measures. One novel way to measure it is to use AnthropoAge and S-AnthropoAge, which use sex-dependent body composition measures to predict 10 year all-cause mortality. Studies have found an association between physical activity and BA in different populations. Our objective was to determine the association between physical activity and BA using S-AnthropoAge in a Mexican population of older adults. METHODS: This is a secondary analysis of the Mexican Health and Aging Study. We implemented a simplified version of AnthropoAge (S-AnthropoAge), which is a metric designed to estimate BA based on anthropometric parameters, including body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-height ratio. We evaluated the association between accelerated aging and physical activity using adjusted linear regression models. RESULTS: Those who exercised frequently had, on average, 0.449 fewer years of BA (approximately five months) than those who did not (95% CI: -0.661 to -0.231). The presence of comorbidities showed a gradient-effect relationship with BA, compared to self-reported illness. On average, those with two or more illnesses had higher accelerated aging of 0.542 years. Among the variables associated, being the caregiver for a child or children under 15 years old was also significantly associated with accelerated aging, compared to those who were not caregivers, after adjusting for other relevant variables CONCLUSIONS: Our study provides further evidence that regular physical activity influences the acceleration of BA, as captured by S-AnthropoAge. However, additional research is needed to fully understand the potential mediating effect of this association.

doi.org/10.1016/j.arcmed.2026.103491PubMed 42468468Populations