Assessing the Utility of Six of the Better Known Epigenetic Clocks in a Large Study Population

In conclusion, using a large cohort with rich health and DNA methylation data, we provide the first comparison of six major epigenetic measures of biological ageing with respect to their associations with leading causes of mortality and disease burden. DNAm GrimAge outperformed the other measures in its associations with disease data and associated clinical traits. This may suggest that predicting mortality, rather than age or homeostatic characteristics, may be more informative for common disease prediction. Thus, proteomic-based methods (as utilised by DNAm GrimAge) using large, physiologically diverse protein sets for predicting ageing and health may be of particular interest in future studies. Our results may help to refine the future use and development of biological age estimators, particularly in studies which aim to comprehensively examine their ability to predict stringent clinically defined outcomes. Our analyses suggest that epigenetic measures of ageing can predict the incidence of common disease states, even after accounting for major confounding risk factors. This may have significant implications for their potential utility in clinical settings to complement gold-standard methods of clinical disease assessment and management.
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs