New papers on epigenetic age estimators in old age

26. September 2022

Our collaborators at Charité university hospital in Berlin, Germany, have recently extended their ongoing projects assessing the relevance of so called “epigenetic clock” estimates in advance age. To this end, the LIGA team had generated high-resolution DNA methylation profiles in participants of the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II). In their newest analyses, the BASE-II team – with the help of Yasmine Sommerer and Lars Bertram from LIGA – found that vitamin D supplementation (to treat vitamin D deficiency) is associated with slower epigenetic aging (Vetter et al, 2022a). In a second analysis (Vetter et al., 2022b), we investigated the role of perceived stress on epigenetic aging as measured by DNA methylation. Although a growing body of literature suggests an association between higher (=older) epigenetic age and stress or trauma during early childhood, the current study found no evidence for an association of perception of stress with DNAmAA in older people from BASE-II, suggesting that different mechanisms are at work in young vs. old people.