Infant’s DNA Methylation Age at Birth and Epigenetic Aging Accelerators

Abstract

Knowing the biological age of the neonates enables us to evaluate and better understand the health and maturity comprehensively. However, because of dearth of biomarkers, it is difficult to quantify the neonatal biological age. Here we sought to quantify and assess the variability in biological age at birth and to better understand how the aging rates before birth are influenced by exposure in intrauterine period by employing a novel epigenetic biomarker of aging (epigenetic clock). We observed that the methylation age at birth was independent of the infant's sex but was significantly influenced by race. Partial correlation analysis showed a significant negative relationship between maternal socioeconomic status and infants' methylation age (r s = −0.48, P s = 0.005). A significant association with the risk of fast aging was observed for prenatal exposure to tobacco smoke with OR (95% CI) of 3.17 (1.05–9.56). Both estimated cell abundance measures and lymphocyte subpopulations in cord blood showed that tobacco exposed group exhibit an altered T cell compartment, specifically substantial loss of naive T cells. Present study provides the first evidence that common perinatal exposure (such as maternal smoking and lower socioeconomic status) may be important aging accelerators and substantial loss of naive T cells may play a role in the smoking-related fast aging phenomenon.

Epigenetic aging in children from a small‐scale farming society in The Congo Basin: Associations with child growth and family conflict

“…In addition to relationships between EAA and growth under energetic constraint, it is also potentially important to understand how concurrent exposure to psychosocial and energetic stressors relates to children's EAA. Multiple studies have shown that individuals experiencing psychosocial adversity prior to adulthood exhibit greater EAA, and children's family environments may play a role in shaping these effects (Brody, Miller, Yu, Beach, & Chen, ; Javed, Chen, Lin, & Liang, ; Jovanovic et al, ; Lawn et al, ; Sumner, Colich, Uddin, Armstrong, & McLaughlin, ; Wolf et al, ). For example, research among African‐American children found that supportive family contexts were protective for children against the effects of racial discrimination on EAA (Brody, Yu, Chen, Beach, & Miller, ).…”

“…In addition to relationships between EAA and growth under energetic constraint, it is also potentially important to understand how concurrent exposure to psychosocial and energetic stressors relates to children's EAA. Multiple studies have shown that individuals experiencing psychosocial adversity prior to adulthood exhibit greater EAA, and children's family environments may play a role in shaping these effects Javed, Chen, Lin, & Liang, 2016;Jovanovic et al, 2017;Lawn et al, 2018;Sumner, Colich, Uddin, Armstrong, & McLaughlin, 2019;Wolf et al, 2018).…”

Evidence of accelerated epigenetic aging in patients diagnosed with coronary artery disease: Results of the LipidCardio study

“…Hannum´s intrinsic age acceleration and Horvath´s extrinsic acceleration were associated positively with former smoking <15 years prior (N=533, ß=0.65±0.33, p=0.05 and ß=0.78±0.3, p=0.03 respectively) and current smoking (<20 cigarettes/day, N=159, ß=2.12±0.52, p<0.001 and ß=1.33±0.58, p=0.02 respectively) (P. A. . Interestingly, infants of smoking mothers, had a higher risk of a positive age acceleration, measured by the difference of the Horvath age estimate and chronological age in cord-blood samples, compared to infants with nonsmoking mothers (N=80, OR= 3.17, 95% CI 1.05-9.56) (Javed et al, 2016).…”

“…Contributions (e.g., equipment, logistics, personnel) were made from each of the other participating sites. (Horvath, Gurven, Levine, Trumble, Kaplan, Allayee, Ritz, Chen, Lu, Rickabaugh, Jamieson, Sun, Li, Chen, Quintana-murci, et al, 2016) (Quach, Levine, Tanaka, Lu, Chen, Ferrucci, et al, 2017) (Simpkin et al, 2017) Public DNA methylation dataset (cord blood) N=80 -Horvath -Smoking (Javed, Chen, Lin, & Liang, 2016)…”

DNA methylation and socioeconomic status in a Mexican-American birth cohort

“…In a separate analysis in this same North Carolina cohort, authors observed an opposite and significant association with neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) for MEG3 (hypermethylation) [ 41 ]. Finally, a birth cohort study from China [ 42 ] measured DNA methylation at several hundred CpG sites and found that lower maternal SES was associated with older epigenetic age using a novel ‘epigenetic clock’ method. However, repeat element methylation in infants has yet to be examined in relation to socioeconomic status.…”