How Your Personal ‘Age Gap’ Relates to Your Cancer Risk

This is the first study to link the discrepancy between epigenetic age and chronological age with both cancer development and cancer death using multiple blood samples collected over time. The multiple samples, which showed changing epigenetic age, allowed for more precise measurements of epigenetic age and its relationship to cancer risk. Other studies have looked at blood samples collected only at a single time point.

The study, published in EBioMedicine, was a longitudinal design with multiple blood samples collected from 1999 to 2013. Scientists used 834 blood samples collected from 442 participants who were free of cancer at the time of the blood draw.

For each one-year increase in the discrepancy between chronological and epigenetic ages, there was a 6 percent increased risk of getting cancer within three years and a 17 percent increased risk of cancer death within five years. Those who will develop cancer have an epigenetic age about six months older than their chronological age; those who will die of cancer are about 2.2 years older, the study shows.

“Our results suggest future researchers should focus on the epigenetic-chronological age discrepancy for its potential to show a big picture snapshot of human health and disease at a molecular level,” says Yinan Zheng, a predoctoral fellow at Feinberg and a coauthor of the study.

The team is studying whether individuals can lower their epigenetic age through lifestyle improvements such as increasing exercise and having a healthier diet, says Brian Joyce, co-first author and predoctoral fellow at Feinberg.

Republished from Futurity.org as a derivative work under the Attribution 4.0 International license. Original article posted to Futurity by .

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