The effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on young children's biological ageing

This study investigated how exogenous variation in exposure to the COVID-19 pandemic impacted biological ageing across early childhood. A sample of socioeconomically diverse pregnant women were recruited from New York City in 2019 to participate in a longitudinal study of child development (N = 93). Saliva samples were collected from infants to assess epigenetic age at 1-month postpartum. By the start of the pandemic, infants ranged in age from 0 to 9.5 months old, thus experiencing different durations of pandemic exposure in the first year of life. At 30 months, children returned to the laboratory to provide a second saliva sample (N = 52; 59% Female, 50% Hispanic). There was no evidence of large effects of pandemic exposure on trajectories of biological ageing from 1 month to 30 months.