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The strong effects of age on DNA methylation levels have been known since the late 1960s.[1] A
vast literature describes sets of CpGs whose DNA methylation levels correlate with age, e.g.[2]
[3][4][5][6] The first description of an epigenetic clock was presented by the Technical
University of Munich epigenetics lab of Axel Schumacher in 2009 who demonstrated that a set
of differentially methylated loci can be used to predict ageing and disease onset in ageing mouse
models.[7] The first robust demonstration that DNA methylation levels in saliva could generate
age predictors with an average accuracy of 5.2 years was published by a UCLA team including
Sven Bocklandt, Steve Horvath, and Eric Vilain in 2011 (Bocklandt et al. 2011).[8][9] The labs
of Trey Ideker and Kang Zhang at the University of California, San Diego published the Hannum
epigenetic clock (Hannum 2013),[10] which consisted of 71 markers that accurately estimate age
based on blood methylation levels. The first multi-tissue epigenetic clock, Horvath's epigenetic
clock, was developed by Steve Horvath, a professor of human genetics and of biostatistics at
UCLA (Horvath 2013).[11][12] Horvath spent over 4 years collecting publicly available Illumina
DNA methylation data and identifying suitable statistical methods.[13] The personal story behind
the discovery was featured in Nature.[14] The age estimator was developed using 8,000 samples
from 82 Illumina DNA methylation array datasets, encompassing 51 healthy tissues and cell
types. The major innovation of Horvath's epigenetic clock lies in its wide applicability: the same
set of 353 CpGs and the same prediction algorithm is used irrespective of the DNA source within
the organism, i.e. it does not require any adjustments or offsets.[11] This property allows one to
compare the ages of different areas of the human body using the same aging clock.
Salient features of Horvath's epigenetic clock include its applicability to a broad spectrum of
tissues and cell types. Since it allows one to contrast the ages of different tissues from the same
subject, it can be used to identify tissues that show evidence of accelerated age due to disease.
Statistical approach
The basic approach is to form a weighted average of the 353 clock CpGs, which is then
transformed to DNAm age using a calibration function. The calibration function reveals that the
epigenetic clock has a high ticking rate until adulthood, after which it slows to a constant ticking
rate. Using the training data sets, Horvath used a penalized regression model (Elastic net
regularization) to regress a calibrated version of chronological age on 21,369 CpG probes that
were present both on the Illumina 450K and 27K platform and had fewer than 10 missing values.
DNAm age is defined as estimated ("predicted") age. The elastic net predictor automatically
selected 353 CpGs. 193 of the 353 CpGs correlate positively with age while the remaining 160
CpGs correlate negatively with age. R software and a freely available web-based tool can be
found at the following webpage.[25]
Accuracy
The median error of estimated age is 3.6 years across a wide spectrum of tissues and cell types,
[11] although this increases for older individuals[24] The epigenetic clock performs well in
heterogeneous tissues (for example, whole blood, peripheral blood mononuclear cells, cerebellar
samples, occipital cortex, buccal epithelium, colon, adipose, kidney, liver, lung, saliva, uterine
cervix, epidermis, muscle) as well as in individual cell types such as CD4 T cells, CD14
monocytes, glial cells, neurons, immortalized B cells, mesenchymal stromal cells.[11] However,
accuracy depends to some extent on the source of the DNA.
Lifestyle factors
In general, lifestyle factors have only weak effects on epigenetic age acceleration in blood.[34]
However, cross sectional studies of extrinsic epigenetic aging rates in blood confirm the
conventional wisdom regarding the benefits of education, eating a high plant diet with lean
meats, moderate alcohol consumption, physical activity and the risks associated with metabolic
syndrome.
Cancer tissue
Cancer tissues show both positive and negative age acceleration effects. For most tumor types,
no significant relationship can be observed between age acceleration and tumor morphology
(grade/stage).[11][38] On average, cancer tissues with mutated TP53 have a lower age
acceleration than those without it.[11] Further, cancer tissues with high age acceleration tend to
have fewer somatic mutations than those with low age acceleration.[11][38] Age acceleration is
highly related to various genomic aberrations in cancer tissues. Somatic mutations in estrogen
receptors or progesterone receptors are associated with accelerated DNAm age in breast cancer.
[11] Colorectal cancer samples with a BRAF (V600E) mutation or promoter hypermethylation of
the mismatch repair gene MLH1 are associated with an increased age acceleration.[11] Age
acceleration in glioblastoma multiforme samples is highly significantly associated with certain
mutations in H3F3A.[11] One study suggests that the epigenetic age of blood tissue may be
prognostic of lung cancer incidence.[39]
Huntington's disease
Huntington's disease has been found to increase the epigenetic aging rates of several human brain
regions.[42]
HIV infection
Infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus-1 (HIV) is associated with clinical symptoms
of accelerated aging, as evidenced by increased incidence and diversity of age-related illnesses at
relatively young ages. But it has been difficult to detect an accelerated aging effect on a
molecular level. An epigenetic clock analysis of human DNA from HIV+ subjects and controls
detected a significant age acceleration effect in brain (7.4 years) and blood (5.2 years) tissue due
to HIV-1 infection.[43] These results are consistent with an independent study that also found an
age advancement of 5 years in blood of HIV patients and a strong effect of the HLA locus.[44]
Parkinson's disease
A large-scale study suggests that the blood of Parkinson's disease subjects exhibits (relatively
weak) accelerated aging effects.[45]
Progeria
Adult progeria also known as Werner syndrome is associated with epigenetic age acceleration in
blood.[52] Fibroblast samples from children with Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria exhibit
accelerated epigenetic aging effects according to the "skin & blood" epigenetic clock but not
according to the original pan tissue clock from Horvath.[53]
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Endogenous DNA damages occur frequently including about 50 double-strand DNA breaks per
cell cycle[55] and about 10,000 oxidative damages per day (see DNA damage (naturally
occurring)). During repair of double-strand breaks many epigenetic alterations are introduced,
and in a percentage of cases epigenetic alterations remain after repair is completed, including
increased methylation of CpG island promoters.[56][57][58] Similar, but usually transient
epigenetic alterations were recently found during repair of oxidative damages caused by H2O2,
and it was suggested that occasionally these epigenetic alterations may also remain after repair.
[59] These accumulated epigenetic alterations may contribute to the epigenetic clock.
Accumulation of epigenetic alterations may parallel the accumulation of un-repaired DNA
damages that are proposed to cause aging (see DNA damage theory of aging).
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Several other age estimators have been described in the literature.
1) Weidner et al. (2014) describe an age estimator for DNA from blood that uses only three CpG
sites of genes hardly affected by aging (cg25809905 in integrin, alpha 2b (ITGA2B);
cg02228185 in aspartoacylase (ASPA) and cg17861230 in phosphodiesterase 4C, cAMP specific
(PDE4C)).[60] The age estimator by Weidener et al. (2014) applies only to blood. Even in blood
this sparse estimator is far less accurate than Horvath's epigenetic clock (Horvath 2014) when
applied to data generated by the Illumina 27K or 450K platforms.[61] But the sparse estimator
was developed for pyrosequencing data and is highly cost effective.[62]
2) Hannum et al. (2013)[10] report several age estimators: one for each tissue type. Each of these
estimators requires covariate information (e.g. gender, body mass index, batch). The authors
mention that each tissue led to a clear linear offset (intercept and slope). Therefore, the authors
had to adjust the blood-based age estimator for each tissue type using a linear model. When the
Hannum estimator is applied to other tissues, it leads to a high error (due to poor calibration) as
can be seen from Figure 4A in Hannum et al. (2013). Hannum et al. adjusted their blood-based
age estimator (by adjusting the slope and the intercept term) in order to apply it to other tissue
types. Since this adjustment step removes differences between tissue, the blood-based estimator
from Hannum et al. cannot be used to compare the ages of different tissues/organs. In contrast, a
salient characteristic of the epigenetic clock is that one does not have to carry out such a
calibration step:[11] it always uses the same CpGs and the same coefficient values. Therefore,
Horvath's epigenetic clock can be used to compare the ages of different tissues/cells/organs from
the same individual. While the age estimators from Hannum et al. cannot be used to compare the
ages of different normal tissues, they can be used to compare the age of a cancerous tissue with
that of a corresponding normal (non-cancerous) tissue. Hannum et al. reported pronounced age
acceleration effects in all cancers. In contrast, Horvath's epigenetic clock[38][63] reveals that
some cancer types (e.g. triple negative breast cancers or uterine corpus endometrial carcinoma)
exhibit negative age acceleration, i.e. cancer tissue can be much younger than expected. An
important difference relates to additional covariates. Hannum's age estimators make use of
covariates such as gender, body mass index, diabetes status, ethnicity, and batch. Since new data
involve different batches, one cannot apply it directly to new data. However, the authors present
coefficient values for their CpGs in Supplementary Tables which can be used to define an
aggregate measure that tends to be strongly correlated with chronological age but may be poorly
calibrated (i.e. lead to high errors).
4) Galkin et al. used deep neural networks to train an epigenetic aging clock of unprecedented
accuracy using >6,000 blood samples.[65] The clock uses information from 1000 CpG sites and
predicts people with certain conditions older than healthy controls: IBD, frontotemporal
dementia, ovarian cancer, obesity. The aging clock is planned to be released for public use in
2021 by an Insilico Medicine spinoff company Deep Longevity.
In a multicenter benchmarking study 18 research groups from three continents compared all
promising methods for analyzing DNA methylation in the clinic and identified the most accurate
methods, having concluded that epigenetic tests based on DNA methylation are a mature
technology ready for broad clinical use.[66]
Other species
Wang et al., (in mice livers)[67] and Petkovich et al. (based on mice blood DNA methylation
profiles)[68] examined whether mice and humans experience similar patterns of change in the
methylome with age. They found that mice treated with lifespan-extending interventions (such as
calorie restriction or dietary rapamycin) were significantly younger in epigenetic age than their
untreated, wild-type age-matched controls. Mice age predictors also detects the longevity effects
of gene knockouts, and rejuvenation of fibroblast-derived iPSCs.
Mice multi-tissue age predictor based on DNA methylation at 329 unique CpG sites reached a
median absolute error of less than four weeks (~5 percent of lifespan). An attempt to use the
human clock sites in mice for age predictions showed that the human clock is not fully conserved
in mice.[69] Differences between human and mouse clocks suggests that epigenetic clocks need
to be trained specifically for different species.[70]
Changes to DNA methylation patterns have great potential for age estimation and biomarker
search in domestic and wild animals.[71]