eLife Surprising Discovery: Epigenetic-Accelerated Aging Causes Bowel Cancer

This study provides evidence that biological age may be one of the reasons for the increased risk of certain diseases, and paves the way for interventions to slow the process

Epigenetic marks are changes in DNA that may change the way our genes work, changing as we age

"When a person's biological age is older than their chronological age, they are said to be experiencing epigenetic age acceleration," explained first author Fernanda Morales-Bernstein.

Establishing a causal relationship between biological clocks and disease is challenging because it is difficult to know whether biological aging increases the risk of disease, or whether other independent factors increase the risk of both disease and biological aging

The team compared four established epigenetic clocks used to measure biological aging and their genetically predicted links to a range of cancer types

They found limited evidence that epigenetic age acceleration is causally linked to breast, lung, ovarian or prostate cancer

The most striking result was bowel cancer, measured with GrimAge, one of the second-generation clocks, showing that for every additional year of biological age (relative to chronological age), the risk of bowel cancer increased by 12 percent

Previous studies have shown that epigenetic age acceleration is influenced by multiple cancer risk factors, such as obesity and smoking

"Our work provides potentially relevant findings for public health," said senior author Rebecca Richmond, a Molecular Epidemiology Fellow at the University of Bristol Medical Research Council's Division of Integrative Epidemiology

This research was conducted by: Wellcome; Cancer Research UK; Medical Research Council; Business Programme 'Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation'; National Institutes of Health; NIH Biomedical Research Centre; Bristol and Weiss Dayton University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust; Alzheimer's Society; National Institutes of Health

Journal Reference :

1. Fernanda Morales Berstein, Daniel L McCartney, Ake T Lu, Konstantinos K Tsilidis, Emmanouil Bouras, Philip C Haycock, Kimberley Burrows, Amanda I Phipps, Daniel D Buchanan, Iona Cheng, Richard M Martin, George Davey Smith, Caroline L Relton, Steve Horvath, Riccardo E Marioni, Tom G Richardson, Rebecca C Richmond.