An integrative study of five biological clocks in somatic and mental health

Abstract

1 5 15 20 ABSTRACT Biological clocks have been developed at different molecular levels and were found to be more advanced in the presence of somatic illnesses and mental disorders. However, it is unclear whether different biological clocks reflect similar aging processes and determinants. In ~3000 subjects, we examined whether 5 biological clocks (telomere length, epigenetic, transcriptomic, proteomic and metabolomic clocks) were interrelated and associated to somatic and mental health determinants.Correlations between biological clocks were small (all r<0.2), indicating little overlap. The most consistent associations with the advanced biological clocks were found for male sex, higher BMI, metabolic syndrome, smoking and depression. As compared to the individual clocks, a composite index of all five clocks showed most pronounced associations with health determinants. The large effect sizes of the composite index and the low correlation between biological clocks, indicate that one's biological age is best reflected by combining aging measures from multiple cellular levels. 2 30 35 40 45

Contributing Factors to Advanced Brain Aging in Depression and Anxiety Disorders

“…Surprisingly, brain-PAD was negatively associated with the proteomic clock (r=-0.24, p=0.02) after correcting for age (albeit in a greatly reduced overlapping sample of N=98). Only a handful of studies have compared multiple biological age indicators side-by-side (Belsky et al, 2018; Jansen et al, 2020; Kim et al, 2017; Murabito et al, 2018), but the current findings support most work showing the very little overlap between biological clocks from different types of data (Hägg et al, 2019). However, the small but significant negative correlation between brain and proteomic aging suggests a further study with more focus on the interplay between this peripheral and central proxy of aging is needed.…”

“…Surprisingly, brain-PAD was negatively associated with the proteomic clock (r=-0.24, p=0.02) after correcting for age (albeit in a greatly reduced overlapping sample of N=98). Only a handful of studies have compared multiple biological age indicators side-by-side (Belsky et al, 2018;Jansen et al, 2020;Kim et al, 2017;Murabito et al, 2018), but the current findings support most work…”

Testing Black-White disparities in biological aging in older adults in the United States: analysis of DNA-methylation and blood-chemistry methods

“…Across the three measures of healthspan-related characteristics, biological aging mediated one quarter to one third of Black-White disparities (Proportion mediated for functional deficits =0. 25 Figure 1D). Results were similar for analysis of KDM Biological Age and homeostatic dysregulation, although the proportion mediated was somewhat larger for the homeostatic dysregulation measure (Proportion mediated range 0.25-0.48).…”

“…Many methods are proposed to quantify biological aging from several biological levels of analysis (22,23). Agreement between measures is often poor; there is no gold standard (24)(25)(26). Measures based on analysis of blood-chemistry and DNA methylation data have received the most attention to date.…”

Unite to predict

“…Previously, no study of aging has brought together data from more than a few different molecular levels of analysis in a single sample. Now, in eLife, Rick Jansen (VU University Medical Center, Amsterdam) and colleagues – Laura Han, Josine Verhoeven, Yuri Milaneschi and Brenda Penninx (all from Amsterdam), and Karolina Aberg and Edwin van de Oord (both from Virginia Commonwealth University) – report an analysis of clocks developed from five different molecular features that provides a provocative answer to this question ( Jansen et al, 2021 ).…”