Impact of excessive alcohol abuse on age prediction using the VISAGE enhanced tool for epigenetic age estimation in blood

Abstract

DNA methylation-based clocks provide the most accurate age estimates with practical implications for clinical and forensic genetics. However, the effects of external factors that may influence the estimates are poorly studied. Here, we evaluated the effect of alcohol consumption on epigenetic age prediction in a cohort of extreme alcohol abusers. Blood samples from deceased alcohol abusers and age- and sex-matched controls were analyzed using the VISAGE enhanced tool for age prediction from somatic tissues that enables examination of 44 CpGs within eight age markers. Significantly altered DNA methylation was recorded for alcohol abusers in MIR29B2CHG. This resulted in a mean predicted age of 1.4 years higher compared to the controls and this trend increased in older individuals. The association of alcohol abuse with epigenetic age acceleration, as determined by the prediction analysis performed based on MIR29B2CHG, was small but significant (β = 0.190; P-value = 0.007). However, the observed alteration in DNA methylation of MIR29B2CHG had a non-significant effect on age estimation with the VISAGE age prediction model. The mean absolute error in the alcohol-abusing cohort was 3.1 years, compared to 3.3 years in the control group. At the same time, upregulation of MIR29B2CHG expression may have a biological function, which merits further studies.

Biological age and brain age in midlife: relationship to multimorbidity and mental health

“…Niu et al, 2022). In addition, accelerated biological aging has been reported in substance use (Bachi, Sierra, Volkow, Goldstein, & Alia-Klein, 2017) and alcohol abuse (Piniewska-Róg et al, 2021). Some biological age indicators (e.g., lung function, telomere length) have also been found to be altered in depression and anxiety disorder (Han et al, 2019).…”

Chronological Age Prediction: Developmental Evaluation of DNA Methylation-Based Machine Learning Models

“…The bibliographic search strategies were developed according to the DNAm-based age prediction studies with MAD values less than 5 years between 2014 and 2021, and we collected a cohort of 7,084 individuals from 16 countries or populations ( Weidner et al, 2014 ; Bekaert et al, 2015 ; Xu et al, 2015 ; Zbieć-Piekarska et al, 2015a ; Zbieć-Piekarska, et al, 2015b ; Park et al, 2016 ; Zubakov et al, 2016 ; Cho et al, 2017 ; Feng et al, 2018 ; Alsaleh and Haddrill, 2019 ; Daunay et al, 2019 ; Jung et al, 2019 ; Li et al, 2019 ; Dias et al, 2020 ; Garali et al, 2020 ; Lau and Fung, 2020 ; Pan et al, 2020 ; Piniewska-Róg et al, 2021 ; Sukawutthiya et al, 2021 ; Woźniak et al, 2021 ; Xiao et al, 2021 ). The correlation coefficient ( r ) ranking of nine age-associated genes was obtained by meta-analyses ( Figure 1 and Supplementary Figure S1 ).…”

Recent advances in forensic biology and forensic DNA typing: INTERPOL review 2019–2022

“…The VISAGE ( Vis ible A ttributes Through Ge nomics) Consortium, which consists of 13 partners from academic, police, and justice institutions in 8 European countries, has established new scientific knowledge and developed and tested prototype tools for DNA analysis and statistical interpretation as well as conducted education for stakeholders. In the 2019 to 2022 time window of this review, this concerted effort produced 45 one review article [ 417 ], 22 original research publications [ 337 , [420] , [421] , [422] , [423] , [424] , [425] , [426] , [427] , [428] , [429] , [430] , [431] , [432] , [433] , [434] , [435] , [436] , [437] , [438] , [439] , [440] ], and three reports [ [441] , [442] , [443] ].…”