The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.
ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutritional Epidemiology
Volume 12 - 2025 |
doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1504437
This article is part of the Research Topic Preventative Medicine: Nutritional and Lifestyle Interventions for Healthy Ageing and Chronic Diseases View all 32 articles
The relationship between dietary intake of omega-3 and biological aging in American older adults: A cross-sectional study using combined machine learning algorithms
Provisionally accepted- Guang’anmen Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, China
Objective: This study primarily aims to explore the correlation between dietary omega-3 intake, its main components, and biological aging indicators, specifically horvathage and horvathtelo. Methods: We utilizes data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), conducted between 1999 and 2002, involving 2,136 participants aged 50 and above. We employed Weighted linear regression models to assess the impact of omega-3 intake on biological aging, and conducted subgroup analyses. Additionally, we investigated both linear and nonlinear relationships between omega-3 intake and biological aging using restricted cubic splines (RCS) analysis. Finally, we compared the performance of nine machine learning (ML) algorithms in delaying biological aging and applied the SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) to interpret the significance of omega-3 and its components. Results: The regression analysis indicated that, compared to individuals in baseline levels omega-3 intake (first tertile, T1), those in highest tertile (T3, ≥1.631 g/d) have lower horvathage on average (Beta = −1.00), and ALA (T3, ≥1.512 g/d) also exhibited similar results compared to individuals at baseline levels (T1) (Beta = −1.10). In contrast, compared to individuals with baseline levels of omega-3 intake (T1), individuals in T2 (≥0.917 g/d) and T3 levels of omega-3 intake have higher horvathtelo on average, with Beta values of 0.04 and 0.05 for T2 and T3, respectively. Meanwhile, ALA (T3), DHA (T3, ≥0.041 g/d), and EPA (T3, ≥0.011 g/d) intake also have higher horvathtelo on average compared to individuals at baseline levels (T1) (Beta_ALA = 0.03, Beta_DHA = 0.03, Beta_EPA = 0.05). RCS analysis revealed a linear association between omega-3 and horvathage, while a nonlinear association was observed for horvathtelo. The Linear Support Vector Machine (LSVM) model demonstrated the highest predictive capability among the nine ML models. SHAP analysis indicated that for both horvathage and horvathtelo, the importance ranking of omega-3 and its components was omega-3 > ALA > DHA > EPA. Conclusion: Increasing the omega-3 intake may be associated with a slower increase in biological age and a reduction in the shortening of telomere length.
Keywords: omega-3, Alpha-linolenic acid, Docosahexaenoic acid, Eicosapentaenoic Acid, DNA methylation age, telomere length, National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, machine learning
Received: 30 Sep 2024; Accepted: 16 Jan 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yan, Cai, Chang, Liu and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Ruxiu Liu, Guang’anmen Hospital, China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, Beijing, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.