{"id":147157,"date":"2022-09-27T19:23:54","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T00:23:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/epigenetic-aging-and-perceived-psychological-stress-in-old-age"},"modified":"2022-09-27T19:23:54","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T00:23:54","slug":"epigenetic-aging-and-perceived-psychological-stress-in-old-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/09\/epigenetic-aging-and-perceived-psychological-stress-in-old-age","title":{"rendered":"Epigenetic aging and perceived psychological stress in old age"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Additionally, epigenetic changes were suggested to be a possible link [30<\/a>, 31<\/a>] between adverse childhood experiences and mortality as well as higher morbidity burden in late life [32<\/a>]. It was proposed that this link could be mediated by health-adverse coping mechanisms (activated as a result of high levels of anxiety and depression) that are associated with adverse childhood experiences [33<\/a>]. Some of these coping strategies, such as smoking, alcohol abuse and and a high BMI resulting from unhealthy eating habits, were shown to be associated with DNAmAA in some studies [34<\/a>,35<\/a>,36<\/a>]. However, these results were not unequivocally replicated [37<\/a>,38<\/a>,39<\/a>] (reviewed in ref. [40<\/a>]).<\/p>\n

Previous studies that examined the relationship between DNAmAA and stress operationalized stress as low socioeconomic status (SES) [41<\/a>, 42<\/a>], (childhood) trauma [26<\/a>, 43<\/a>,44<\/a>,45<\/a>], racial discrimination [46<\/a>], or exposure to violence [47<\/a>]. Many previous studies on the topic focused on changes in DNAm age during childhood as this period is known to be particularly prone to stress-related epigenetic changes [29<\/a>].<\/p>\n

In contrast, in this work we focus on older age which was shown to be the second most vulnerable phase in a person\u2019s life in terms of epigenetics [29<\/a>]. As epigenetic modifications remain even after the psychological stimulus has ceased there is the possibility of cumulating effects on the epigenome exerted by repeated psychological stressors [29<\/a>]. Specifically, we analyzed the association between the amount of experienced stress (measured by Cohen\u2019s Perceived Stress Scale [PSS] [48<\/a>]) and several DNAm age estimators (i.e. the 7-CpG clock [49<\/a>], Horvath\u2019s clock [50<\/a>], Hannum\u2019s clock [51<\/a>], PhenoAge [34<\/a>], GrimAge [52<\/a>]) in 1,100 older adults. While the PSS represents a well-established marker of perceived stress [48<\/a>], to our knowledge it has not been investigated in the context of epigenetic aging before. While we were able to replicate well-established associations with perceived stress, none of the five epigenetic clocks analyzed in the current study were associated with the perception of stress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Additionally, epigenetic changes were suggested to be a possible link [30, 31] between adverse childhood experiences and mortality as well as higher morbidity burden in late life [32]. It was proposed that this link could be mediated by health-adverse coping mechanisms (activated as a result of high levels of anxiety and depression) that are associated [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[412,269,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genetics","category-life-extension","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}