Epigenetic age associates with psychosocial stress and resilience in children of Latinx immigrants.

To investigate associations of psychosocial stressors and resilience factors with DNA methylation age in the saliva of Latinx children of immigrants before and after the 2016 presidential election (2015-2018). We compared psychosocial exposures with four distinct measures of epigenetic age assessed in the saliva of children (6-13 years, n = 71 pre-election; n = 35 post-election). Exploratory genome-wide analyses were also conducted. We found distinct associations across epigenetic clocks and time points; for example, greater maternal social status pre-election and fear of parent deportation post-election both associated with decreased Hannum age (p ≤ 0.01).  Although limited in size, our unique study design provides novel hypotheses regarding how the social environment may influence epigenetic aging and genome-wide methylation, potentially contributing to racial/ethnic health inequalities.