Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
Population Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA.
Curr Environ Health Rep. 2022 Jun;9(2):196-210. doi: 10.1007/s40572-022-00338-8. Epub 2022 Feb 18.
Acceleration of biological processes of aging is hypothesized to drive excess morbidity and mortality in socially disadvantaged populations. DNA methylation measures of biological aging provide tools for testing this hypothesis.
Next-generation DNA methylation measures of biological aging developed to predict mortality risk and physiological decline are more predictive of morbidity and mortality than the original epigenetic clocks developed to predict chronological age. These new measures show consistent evidence of more advanced and faster biological aging in people exposed to socioeconomic disadvantage and may be able to record the emergence of socially determined health inequalities as early as childhood. Next-generation DNA methylation measures of biological aging also indicate race/ethnic disparities in biological aging. More research is needed on these measures in samples of non-Western and non-White populations. New DNA methylation measures of biological aging open opportunities for refining inference about the causes of social disparities in health and devising policies to eliminate them. Further refining measures of biological aging by including more diversity in samples used for measurement development is a critical priority for the field.
目的综述：衰老的生物学过程加速被假设为导致社会弱势群体中过多的发病率和死亡率。生物老化的 DNA 甲基化测量提供了检验这一假设的工具。
最新发现：为预测死亡率和生理衰退而开发的新一代生物老化 DNA 甲基化测量方法比最初开发的用于预测实际年龄的表观遗传钟更能预测发病率和死亡率。这些新的测量方法表明，在接触社会经济劣势的人群中，生物衰老的进展和速度更快，并且可能能够早在儿童时期就记录下由社会决定的健康不平等的出现。新一代生物老化的 DNA 甲基化测量也表明生物老化方面存在种族/民族差异。需要在非西方和非白人人群的样本中对这些措施进行更多的研究。生物老化的新 DNA 甲基化测量为完善对健康方面社会差异原因的推断以及制定消除这些差异的政策提供了机会。通过在用于测量开发的样本中纳入更多的多样性来进一步完善生物老化的测量方法是该领域的一个关键优先事项。
