Data availability
All databases used in this study are publicly accessible. Indicators of GDP, air quality, socioeconomic inequality (Gini index) and migration were obtained from the World Bank’s platform (https://databank.worldbank.org/). Country-level gender inequality indexes (GII) are available on the WHO’s website (https://www.who.int/data/nutrition/nlis/info/gender-inequality-index-(gii)/. Sociopolitical exposome indicators are available through the Global State of Democracy Indices (https://www.idea.int/democracytracker/dataset-resources/). Country-level percentages of foreign-speaking languages are sourced from the Eurostat database covering 2007, 2011, 2016 and 2022 waves (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?/title=Foreign_language_skills_statistics/). Linguistic exposome indicators for the number of stable and institutional languages per European country are available from Ethnologue (https://www.ethnologue.com/). The two most spoken languages per country are sourced from the ‘Europeans and their languages’ Eurobarometer survey by the European Commission (https://languageknowledge.eu/countries-list/). The typological distance between languages was estimated using the Perplexity metric available at https://github.com/gamallo/Perplexity/.
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Acknowledgements
L.A. is supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under the program Ramón y Cajal (RYC2022-035514-I). H.H. is supported by Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative. A.I. is supported by grants from the multi-partner consortium to expand dementia research in Latin America (ReDLat, supported by Fogarty International Center (FIC), National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institutes of Aging (R01 AG057234, R01 AG075775, R01 AG21051, R01 AG083799, CARDS-NIH), Alzheimer’s Association (SG-20-725707), Rainwater Charitable Foundation – The Bluefield project to cure FTD, and Global Brain Health Institute)); ANID/FONDECYT Regular (1210195 and 1210176 and 1220995); ANID/PIA/ANILLOS ACT210096; FONDEF ID20I10152 and ANID/FONDAP 15150012. A.M.G. is supported by the NIH, National Institutes of Aging (R01 AG075775, R01 AG083799, 2P01AG019724); ANID/FONDECYT Regular (1250317 and 1250091); DICYT-USACH (032351MA); and Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (01-PICTE-2022-05-00103). C.D.-A. is supported by ANID/FONDECYT Regular 1210622, ANID/PIA/ANILLOS ACT210096, Alzheimer’s Association (AARGD-24- 1310017), ANID/FOVI240065 and ANID/Proyecto Exploración 13240170. H.S.-G. is supported by NIH R01 (‘Social epigenetics of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias in Latin American countries’, no. 1R01AG082056-01A1), Global Brain Health Institute and Alzheimer Association (‘Brain health in individuals with exposition to high violence in Colombia’, no. GBHI ALZ UK-23-971135”). S.B. is supported by the Global Brain Health Institute, Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s Society UK and Pilot Awards for Global Brain Health Leaders (grant no. GBHI ALZ UK- 25-1289623). Additionally, research reported in this publication was supported by the Fogarty International Center of the NIH under award number D43TW012455. J.M. and C.C.-O. are supported by postdoctoral fellowships granted by the multi-partner consortium to expand dementia research in Latin America (ReDLat), and the Atlantic Fellows for Equity in Brain Health program. The contents of this publication are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not represent the official views of these institutions. This paper uses data from SHARE Waves 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 (DOIs: https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w1.900; https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w2.900; https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w3.900; https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w4.900; https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w5.900; https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w6.900; https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w6.DBS.100; https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w7.900; https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w8.900; https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w8ca.900; https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w9.900; https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.w9ca.900; https://doi.org/10.6103/SHARE.HCAP1.100). The SHARE data collection has been funded by the European Commission, DG RTD through FP5 (QLK6-CT-2001-00360), FP6 (SHARE-I3: RII-CT-2006-062193, COMPARE: CIT5-CT-2005-028857, SHARELIFE: CIT4-CT-2006-028812), FP7 (SHARE-PREP: GA N°211909, SHARE-LEAP: GA N°227822, SHARE M4: GA N°261982, DASISH: GA N°283646) and Horizon 2020 (SHARE-DEV3: GA N°676536, SHARE-COHESION: GA N°870628, SERISS: GA N°654221, SSHOC: GA N°823782, SHARE-COVID19: GA N°101015924) and by DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion through VS 2015/0195, VS 2016/0135, VS 2018/0285, VS 2019/0332, VS 2020/0313, SHARE-EUCOV: GA N°101052589 and EUCOVII: GA N°101102412. Additional funding from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (01UW1301, 01UW1801, 01UW2202), the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science, the US National Institute on Aging (U01_AG09740-13S2, P01_AG005842, P01_AG08291, P30_AG12815, R21_AG025169, Y1-AG-4553-01, IAG_BSR06-11, OGHA_04-064, BSR12-04, R01_AG052527-02, R01_AG056329-02, R01_AG063944, HHSN271201300071C, RAG052527A) and from various national funding sources is gratefully acknowledged (see www.share-eric.eu).
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Extended data
Extended Data Fig. 1 Stratified analysis by age group.
Associations between number of spoken languages and BAGs across age cohorts (n = 86,149 participants). A) Odds ratio (OR) estimates from the cross-sectional analysis and B) relative risk (RR) estimates from the longitudinal analysis, both stratified by age. Across designs, results show that risk of accelerated aging increases with age among monolinguals. For individuals speaking one additional language, the protective effect weakens with age. In contrast, speaking two or more additional languages is linked to progressively stronger protection with advancing age.
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Source data
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Single Excel file containing statistical source data for all figures. No source data are provided for Fig. 1, as it is a descriptive schematic of the pipeline.
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Amoruso, L., Hernandez, H., Santamaria-Garcia, H. et al. Multilingualism protects against accelerated aging in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of 27 European countries. Nat Aging (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-025-01000-2
Received: 03 April 2025
Accepted: 26 September 2025
Published: 10 November 2025
Version of record: 10 November 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43587-025-01000-2
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