Map of epigenetic age acceleration: a worldwide meta-analysis

Abstract

This study is the first systematic meta-analysis of epigenetic age acceleration of the largest publicly available DNA methylation data for healthy samples (93 datasets, 23K samples), focusing on geographic and ethnic aspects of different countries (25 countries) and populations (31 ethnicities) around the world. The most popular epigenetic tools for assessing age acceleration were examined in detail, their quality metrics were analyzed, and their ability to extrapolate to epigenetic data from different tissue types and age ranges different from the training data of these models was explored. In most cases, the models are not consistent with each other and show different signs of age acceleration, with the PhenoAge model tending to systematically underestimate and different versions of the GrimAge model tending to systematically overestimate the age prediction of healthy subjects. Although GEO is the largest open-access epigenetic database, most countries and populations are not represented, and different datasets use different criteria for determining healthy controls. Because of this, it is difficult to fully isolate the contribution of "geography/environment", "ethnicity" and "healthiness" to epigenetic age acceleration. However, the DunedinPACE metric, which measures aging rate, adequately reflects the standard of living and socioeconomic indicators in countries, although it can be applied only to blood methylation data. When comparing epigenetic age acceleration, males age faster than females in most of the countries and populations considered.