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Digital methylation assessments of alcohol and cigarette consumption account for common variance in accelerated epigenetic ageing
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Digital methylation assessments of alcohol and cigarette consumption account for common variance in accelerated epigenetic ageing

Man-Kit Lei, Frederick X. Gibbons, Meg Gerrard, Steven R.H. Beach, Kelsey Dawes and Robert Philibert
Epigenetics, Vol.17(13), pp.1991-2005
12/09/2022
DOI: 10.1080/15592294.2022.2100684
PMCID: PMC9665121
PMID: 35866695
url
https://doi.org/10.1080/15592294.2022.2100684View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Smoking and Heavy Alcohol Consumption (HAC) are established risk factors for myriad complex disorders of ageing. Yet many prior studies of Epigenetic Ageing (EA) have shown only modest effects of smoking and drinking on accelerated ageing. One potential reason for this conundrum might be the reliance of some prior EA studies on self-reported substance use, which may be unreliable in many samples. To test whether novel, non-self-reported indices would show a stronger association of smoking and HAC to EA, we used methylation sensitive digital PCR (MSdPCR) and data from 437 African American subjects from Wave 7 of the Family and Community Health Study Offspring Cohort to examine the effects of subjective and objective measures of smoking and HAC on 7 indices of EA. Because of limited overall correlations between the various EA indices, we examined patterns of association separately for each index. Consistent with expectations, MSdPCR assessments of smoking and HAC, but not self-reported alcohol consumption, were strongly correlated with accelerated EA. MSdPCR assessments of smoking and HAC accounted for 57% of GrimAge acceleration and the shared variance in GrimAge and DunedinPOAM accelerated EA. We conclude that MSdPCR assessments of smoking and HAC are valuable tools for understanding EA, represent directly targetable conditions for the prevention of premature ageing, and substantially improve upon self-reported assessment of smoking and HAC.

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