The environment strongly influences health outcomes, especially in industrialized societies.
A new study from the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health challenges the long-standing view that inflammation is a universal feature of aging. The research indicates that “inflammaging”—a persistent, low-level inflammation linked to aging—may actually stem from industrialized living conditions and differs widely among human populations. These findings were published in Nature Aging.
The team examined data from four distinct populations: two from industrialized societies (the Italian InCHIANTI study and the Singapore Longitudinal Aging Study, or SLAS) and two Indigenous, non-industrialized groups (the Tsimane in the Bolivian Amazon and the Orang Asli in Peninsular Malaysia).
While both industrialized groups showed similar patterns of age-related inflammation, the same pattern did not emerge in the Indigenous populations. Instead, inflammation among these groups was mainly influenced by exposure to infections rather than the aging process itself.
Chronic disease risk is linked to lifestyle, not inflammation alone
“In industrialized settings, we see clear links between inflammaging and diseases like chronic kidney disease,” said lead author Alan Cohen, PhD, associate professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School and faculty member of the Butler Columbia Aging Center. “But in populations with high infection rates, inflammation appears more reflective of infectious disease burden than of aging itself.”
Interestingly, although the Indigenous populations—especially the Tsimane—exhibited consistently high baseline levels of inflammation, these levels did not rise with age and did not result in the chronic illnesses commonly seen in industrialized countries. In fact, conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s are either uncommon or virtually nonexistent among these groups.
This means that even when younger individuals in Indigenous communities show inflammatory profiles resembling those of older adults in industrialized settings, those profiles do not lead to the same harmful health outcomes.
“These findings really call into question the idea that inflammation is bad per se,” said Cohen. “Rather, it appears that inflammation – and perhaps other aging mechanisms too – may be highly context dependent. On the one hand, that’s challenging, because there won’t be universal answers to scientific questions. On the other, it’s promising, because it means we can intervene and change things.”
Immune markers behave differently in distinct environments
The study used a panel of 19 cytokines—small immune-signaling proteins—to assess inflammation patterns. While these markers aligned with aging in the Italian and Singaporean datasets, they did not replicate among the Tsimane and Orang Asli, whose immune systems were shaped by persistent infections and distinct environmental exposures.
“These results point to an evolutionary mismatch between our immune systems and the environments we now live in,” Cohen explained. “Inflammaging may not be a direct product of aging, but rather a response to industrialized conditions.”
The authors call for a reevaluation of how aging and inflammation are measured across populations and emphasize the need for standardized, context-aware tools. “Factors like environment, lifestyle—such as high physical activity or a very low-fat diet—and infection may all influence how the immune system ages,” said Cohen. “Understanding how these elements interact could help develop more effective global health strategies.”
Reference: “Nonuniversality of inflammaging across human populations” by Maximilien Franck, Kamaryn T. Tanner, Robert L. Tennyson, Camille Daunizeau, Luigi Ferrucci, Stefania Bandinelli, Benjamin C. Trumble, Hillard S. Kaplan, Jacob E. Aronoff, Jonathan Stieglitz, Thomas S. Kraft, Amanda J. Lea, Vivek V. Venkataraman, Ian J. Wallace, Yvonne A. L. Lim, Kee Seong Ng, Joe Poh Sheng Yeong, Roger Ho, Xinru Lim, Ameneh Mehrjerd, Eleftheria G. Charalambous, Allison E. Aiello, Graham Pawelec, Claudio Franceschi, Johannes Hertel, Tamàs Fülöp, Maël Lemoine, Michael Gurven and Alan A. Cohen, 30 June 2025, Nature Aging.
DOI: 10.1038/s43587-025-00888-0
The study was supported by the Impetus program, the French National Research Agency (ANR) under the Investments for the Future (Investissements d’Avenir) program, grant ANR-17-EURE-0010; the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under project ID 499552394 (SFB 1597/1) and grant HE9198/1-1, and the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, National Institute on Aging.
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4 Comments
Since first writing the US FDA (with replies) of my early lay findings of connections between food allergies, added “free” MSG, chronic diseases and obesity in October of 2005 (obviously, now, in-vain) I’ve written thousands of other professionals of various specialties, including some at the “Mailman School of Public Health,” updating as possible, with mostly similar results. Since 2005 I’ve learned to include soy, the cooking oil preservative TBHQ, aspartame, propylene glycol, HFCS and standard blood serum testing for calcium being unreliable in many of my writings. Therefore, with so many lives and so many billions of healthcare dollars obviously at stake, why is it so difficult for college educated professionals in allegedly more-advanced industrialized societies to learn from a senior lay investigator with particular personal experiences, insights and multiple supportive sources regularly cited?
You have not included useful information for your audience. We cannot even strongly infer why your suggestions or claims were not heeded, and I can’t even understand what your suggestions or claims were. Personal your experiences are a cause for curiosity, but not conclusions and thus ignored? Perhaps that is why you are not being heard. So, just what is a lay finding? Do you mean you did research with N=1? Do you mean you reached conclusions without using a control population? Did you conduct an A-B-A-B testing cycle at least on yourself? Your comment is vague and incomplete.
Fascinating research results. Bravo. The western human population has been born, raised and died in an industrial environment for roughly two centuries now. Any idea if there are any identifiable adaptations yet or are we still hunter gatherers underneath?
Perhaps the problem of industrial conditions is not exposure to antigens, but lack of exposure (due to more robust control of pathogen exposure).