DNA methylation age and perceived age in elderly Danish twins. (January 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Debrabant, Birgit; Soerensen, Mette; Christiansen, Lene; Tan, Qihua; McGue, Matt; Christensen, Kaare; Hjelmborg, Jacob
• Is Part Of: Mechanisms of ageing and development. Volume 169(2018)
• Page Start: 40
• Page End: 44
• Publication Date: 2018-01
• Subjects: Aging -- Periodicals; Developmental biology -- Periodicals; Aging -- Periodicals; Developmental Biology -- Periodicals; Vieillissement -- Périodiques; Biologie du développement -- Périodiques; Aging; Developmental biology; Periodicals; 612.67
• DOI: 10.1016/j.mad.2017.09.004
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0047-6374

Abstract

Highlights: We studied perceived age and DNA methylation age in 180 elderly Danish twins. We did not see an association between these when correcting for gender. Intrapair-analysis did not reveal a significant association either. Predicting perceived age with CpGs underlying DNAm age had low prediction quality. Our results suggest that perceived age and DNAm age capture different ageing aspects. Abstract: Perceived age is an easily accessible biomarker of aging. Here, we studied its relation to DNA methylation age (DNAm age) as introduced in (Horvath, 2013 ) in 180 elderly Danish twins. We found perceived age and DNAm age to be associated with chronological age (P = 0.04 resp. P = 2.2e-10) when correcting for gender, but did not see an association between perceived age and DNAm age (P = 0.44). Intrapair-analysis showed that the proportion of pairs where the twin with the highest perceived age also had the highest DNAm age was not different from 0.5 (P = 1), and we did not see a trend when dividing pairs according to their difference in perceived age (P = 0.36). Hence, intrapair analysis did not reveal links between perceived age and DNAm age. Moreover, none of the 353 CpGs underlying DNAm age was individually associated with perceived age after correction for multiple-testing (P > 6e-4, FDR > 0.21). Finally, when constructing an epigenetic signature based on these CpGs to predict perceived age, we only found a correlation of 0.18 (95%CI: −0.06 to 0.40) and a mean square error of 13.6 years 2 between observed and predicted values in the test dataset, indicating poor predictive strength. Altogether, our results suggest that perceived age and DNAm age capture different aging aspects.