Year: 2018

Eat your oats!

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Epigenetics, Immune system, Stress

Here’s some motivation to replenish your oats supply.

From a 2013 Canadian human review:

“Review of human studies investigating the post-prandial blood-glucose lowering ability of oat and barley food products” https://www.nature.com/articles/ejcn201325

“Change in glycaemic response (expressed as incremental area under the post-prandial blood-glucose curve) was greater for intact grains than for processed foods. For processed foods, glycaemic response was more strongly related to the β-glucan dose alone than to the ratio of β-glucan to the available carbohydrate.”

The review found that people don’t have to eat a lot of carbohydrates to get the glycemic-response benefits of β-glucan. Also, eating ~3 grams of β-glucan in whole oats and barley will deliver the same glycemic-response benefits as eating ~4 grams of β-glucan in processed oats and barley.

However, the glycemic index used in the review is a very flawed measure. What’s the point of indexing healthy choices like whole grains to unhealthy choices that healthy people aren’t going to make anyway?

The reviewer somewhat redeemed herself by participating in a 2018 review:

“Processing of oat: the impact on oat’s cholesterol lowering effect” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5885279/

“For a similar dose of β-glucan:

  1. Liquid oat-based foods seem to give more consistent, but moderate reductions in cholesterol than semi-solid or solid foods where the results are more variable;
  2. The quantity of β-glucan and the molecular weight at expected consumption levels (∼3 g day) play a role in cholesterol reduction; and
  3. Unrefined β-glucan-rich oat-based foods (where some of the plant tissue remains intact) often appear more efficient at lowering cholesterol than purified β-glucan added as an ingredient.”

The review’s sections 3. Degree of processing and functionality and 4. Synergistic action of oat constituents were informative:

“Both in vitro and in vivo studies clearly demonstrated the beneficial effect of oat on cholesterolemia, which is unlikely to be due exclusively to β-glucan, but rather to a combined and synergetic action of several oat compounds acting together to reduce blood cholesterol levels.”

Another use of β-glucan is to improve immune response. Here’s a 2016 Netherlands study where the researchers used β-glucan to get a dozen people well after making them sick with lipopolysaccharide as is often done in animal studies:

“β-Glucan Reverses the Epigenetic State of LPS-Induced Immunological Tolerance” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5927328/

“The innate immune ‘training stimulus’ β-glucan can reverse macrophage tolerance ex vivo.”

I’ve curated other research on β-glucan’s immune-response benefits in:

Adverse epigenetic effects of prenatal and perinatal anesthesia

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This 2018 Chinese animal review subject was prenatal and perinatal anesthesia’s adverse epigenetic effects on a fetus/neonate:

“Accumulating evidence from rodent and primate studies has demonstrated that in utero or neonatal exposure to commonly used inhaled and intravenous general anesthetics is associated with neural degeneration and subsequent neurocognitive impairments, manifested in learning and memory disabilities.

So far, conflicting data exist about the effect of anesthetic agents on neurodevelopment in humans and no definite conclusion has been given yet.”

The inhibitors in the above graphic counter anesthesia’s effects on the fetus/neonate, summarized as:

“Epigenetic targeting of DNA methyltransferases and/or histone deacetylases may have some therapeutic value.”

Do physicians consider possible epigenetic alterations of a newborn’s chromatin structure and gene expression when they administer anesthesia to mothers during childbirth?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6079265/ “Epigenetic Alterations in Anesthesia-Induced Neurotoxicity in the Developing Brain”

A top-down view of biological goal-directed mechanisms

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This 2016 US/Italy article was written from a perspective of regenerative bioengineering:

“Higher levels beyond molecular can have their own unique dynamics that offer better (e.g. more parsimonious and potent) explanatory power than models made at lower levels. Biological systems may be best amenable to models that include information structures (organ shape, size, topological arrangements and complex anatomical metrics) not defined at molecular or cellular level but nevertheless serving as the most causally potent ‘knobs’ regulating large-scale outcomes.

Top-down models can be as quantitative as familiar bottom-up systems biology examples, but they are formulated in terms of building blocks that cannot be defined at the level of gene expression and treat those elements as bona fide causal agents (which can be manipulated by interventions and optimization techniques). The near-impossibility of determining which low-level components must be tweaked in order to achieve a specific system-level outcome is a problem that plagues most complex systems.

The current paradigm in biology of exclusively tracking physical measurable and ignoring internal representation and information structures in patterning contexts quite resemble the ultimately unsuccessful behaviourist programme in psychology and neuroscience. For example, even if stem cell biologists knew how to make any desired cell type from an undifferentiated progenitor, the task of assembling them into a limb would be quite intractable.

Current state of the art in the field of developmental bioelectricity is that it is known, at the cellular level, how resting potentials are transduced into downstream gene cascades, as well as which transcriptional and epigenetic targets are sensitive to change in developmental bioelectrical signals. What is largely missing however is a quantitative understanding of how global dynamics of bioelectric circuits make decisions that orchestrate large numbers of individual cells, spread out over considerable anatomical distances, towards specific pattern outcomes.”

Regenerative research is gathering evidence for goal-directed memory and learning that doesn’t meet current definitions. For example:

salamander

“A tail grafted to the flank of a salamander slowly remodels to a limb, a structure more appropriate for its new location, illustrating shape homeostasis towards a normal amphibian body plan. Even tail tip cells (in red) slowly become fingers, showing that remodelling is not driven by only local information.”

These reviewers compared their findings to several existing research and real-world-operations domains. Other models may also benefit from concepts of:

“Quantitative, predictive, mechanistic understanding of goal-directed morphogenesis.”

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.2016.0555 “Top-down models in biology: explanation and control of complex living systems above the molecular level”

I came across this article as a result of its citation in The Body Electric blog post.

“Levin drops a hint that there are photo-sensitive drugs that can control ion gates that can be used to translate a projected geometric image into a pattern of membrane potentials. He argues that the patterns encode ‘blueprints’ rather than a ‘construction manual’ based on the fact that the program is adaptive in the face of physical barriers and disruptions.”

Epigenetic clock statistics and methods

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Epigenetics, Immune system

This 2018 Chinese study was a series of statistical and methodological counter-arguments to a previous epigenetic clock study finding that:

“Only [CpG] sites mapping to the ELOVL2 promoter constitute cell and tissue-type independent aDMPs [age-associated differentially methylated positions].”

The study used external data sets and the newer epigenetic clock’s fibroblast data in its analyses to find:

“While we agree that specific sites mapping to ELOVL2 are special aDMPs in the sense that their effect sizes are particularly large across a number of different tissue-types, our analysis suggests that most aDMPs are valid across multiple different tissue types, suggesting that shared aDMPs are common.”

The details of each of the study’s counter-arguments were compelling. For example:

“We analyzed Illumina 850k data from an EWAS profiling blood, buccal and cervical samples from a common set of 263 women. Because blood is a complex mixture of many immune-cell subtypes, and buccal and cervical samples are highly contaminated by immune cells, we identified aDMPs in each tissue after adjustment for batch effects and cell-type heterogeneity.

Using either an FDR [false discovery rate] < 0.05 or Bonferroni adjusted P-value < 0.05 thresholds, the overlap of aDMPs between the 3 tissues was highly significant, mimicking the result obtained on blood cell subtypes. We observed a total of 2200 aDMPs in common between blood, buccal and cervix, an overlap which cannot be explained by random chance.”

The study’s Discussion section provided qualifications and limitations such as:

“It is important to point out that even if age-associated DNAm changes are widespread across the genome, downstream functional effects may be rare. While specific aDMPs may be shared between tissue-types, it is only in specific tissues or cell-types that any associated functional deregulation may be of biological and clinical significance.“

https://www.aging-us.com/article/101666/text “Cell and tissue type independent age-associated DNA methylation changes are not rare but common”

The November 2018 issue of Aging also contained other articles of interest:

https://www.aging-us.com/article/101626/text “Accelerated DNA methylation age and the use of antihypertensive medication among older adults”

“DNAmAge and AA [age acceleration] may not be able to capture the preventive effects of AHMs [antihypertensive medications] that reduce cardiovascular risks and mortality.”

https://www.aging-us.com/article/101633/text “Azithromycin and Roxithromycin define a new family of senolytic drugs that target senescent human fibroblasts”

“Azithromycin preferentially targets senescent cells, removing approximately 97% of them with great efficiency. This represents a near 25-fold reduction in senescent cells.”

https://www.aging-us.com/article/101647/text “Disease or not, aging is easily treatable”

“Aging consists of progression from (pre)-pre-diseases (early aging) to diseases (late aging associated with functional decline). Aging is NOT a risk factor for these diseases, as aging consists of these diseases: aging and diseases are inseparable.”

Chronological age by itself is an outdated clinical measurement

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Epigenetics

This 2018 editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine concerned a clinical trial of an osteoporosis treatment:

“When measurement of bone density was first introduced 25 years ago, absolute bone mineral density (g per square centimeter) was considered as too onerous for clinicians to understand. Ultimately, these events led to a treatment gap in patients who had strong clinical risk factors for an osteoporotic fracture (particularly age) but had T scores in the osteopenic range.

The average age of the participants in the current trial was approximately 3.5 years older than that in the Fracture Intervention Trial. Owing to the interaction between age and bone mineral density, the results of the current trial should not be extrapolated to younger postmenopausal women (50 to 64 years of age) with osteopenia.

This trial reminds us that risk assessment and treatment decisions go well beyond bone mineral density and should focus particularly on age and a history of previous fractures.”

The time has passed for physicians and clinicians to consider only chronological age when evaluating a patient’s clinical age. More effective human age measurements covering the entire person as well as their body’s components include:

F2.large

This editorial provided the history of how a still-generally-accepted set of diagnostic measurements were selected for their relative convenience instead of chosen for their efficacy. Add chronological age to such ineffective measurements.

Let’s recognize better aging and diagnostic measurements, then incorporate them. How else will we advance past this uninformative averaging and unhelpful recommendation based on chronological age?

“The average age of the participants in the current trial was approximately 3.5 years older than that in the Fracture Intervention Trial. Owing to the interaction between age and bone mineral density, the results of the current trial should not be extrapolated to younger postmenopausal women (50 to 64 years of age) with osteopenia.”

https://www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMe1812434 “A Not-So-New Treatment for Old Bones”

A slanted view of the epigenetic clock

gettingwell4 2-3 stars Required further work, Epigenetics ,

The founder of the epigenetic clock technique was interviewed for MIT Technology Review:

“We need to find ways to keep people healthier longer,” he says. He hopes that refinements to his clock will soon make it precise enough to reflect changes in lifestyle and behavior.”

The journalist attempted to dumb the subject down “for the rest of us” with distortions such as the headline. The varying correlation of epigenetic age to chronological age was somewhat better reported in the story:

“The epigenetic clock is more accurate the younger a person is. It’s especially inaccurate for the very old.”

The journalist inappropriately used luck as a synonym for randomness/stochasticity:

“He estimates that about 40% of the ticking rate is determined by genetic inheritance, and the rest by lifestyle and luck.”

A third example of less-than-straightforward journalism started with:

“Such personalization raises questions about fairness. If your epigenetic clock is ticking faster through no fault of your own..”

Were MIT Technology Review readers unable to comprehend a straightforward story on the epigenetic clock? What was the purpose of slants and distortions in an introductory article?

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612256/want-to-know-when-youre-going-to-die/ “Want to know when you’re going to die?”

Reductionism vs. reductionism

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This 2004 essay by an evolutionary biologist reviewed his field’s direction in the current century:

“Science is impelled by two main factors, technological advance and a guiding vision (overview). A properly balanced relationship between the two is key to the successful development of a science.

Without the proper technological advances the road ahead is blocked. Without a guiding vision there is no road ahead; the science becomes an engineering discipline, concerned with temporal practical problems.

Empirical reductionism is in essence methodological; it is simply a mode of analysis, the dissection of a biological entity or system into its constituent parts in order better to understand it. Empirical reductionism makes no assumptions about the fundamental nature, an ultimate understanding, of living things.

Fundamentalist reductionism (the reductionism of 19th century classical physics), on the other hand, is in essence metaphysical. It is ipso facto a statement about the nature of the world: living systems (like all else) can be completely understood in terms of the properties of their constituent parts.

This is a view that flies in the face of what classically trained biologists tended to take for granted, the notion of emergent properties. Whereas emergence seems to be required to explain numerous biological phenomena, fundamentalist reductionism flatly denies its existence: in all cases the whole is no more than the sum of its parts.”

Regarding cellular evolution:

“Modern concepts of cellular evolution are effectively petrified versions of 19th century speculations. Try to imagine a biology released from the intellectual shackles of mechanism, reductionism, and determinism.

Evolution, as a complex dynamic process, will encounter critical points in its course, junctures that result in phase transitions (drastic changes in the character of the system as a whole). Human language is a development that has set Homo sapiens worlds apart from its otherwise very close primate relatives, adding new dimensions to the phase space within which human evolution occurs. Another good critical-point candidate is the advent of (eucaryotic) multicellularity.

Nowhere in thinking about a symbiotic origin of the eucaryotic cell has consideration been given to the fact that the process as envisioned would involve radical change in the designs of the cells involved. You can’t just tear cell designs apart and willy-nilly construct a new type of design from the parts.

The organization of the mitochondrial endosymbiont is radically changed during its evolution, but that change is a degeneration to a far simpler “cell-like” design. The mitochondrial design could never evolve back to the level of complexity that its free-living [bacterial] ancestor had.

A common thread that links language and multicellularity is communication (interaction at a distance). In each case a complex, sophisticated network of interactions forms the medium within which the new level of organization (entities) comes into existence.

Our experience with variation and selection in the modern context does not begin to prepare us for understanding what happened when cellular evolution was in its very early, rough-and-tumble phase(s) of spewing forth novelty. Cellular evolution began in a highly multiplex fashion, from many initial independent ancestral starting points, not just a single one.”

https://mmbr.asm.org/content/68/2/173 “A New Biology for a New Century”

I came across this review by it being referenced in this researcher’s blog post:

Chinese Longevity Herb
I often don’t agree with him, but I subscribe to his blog because it’s interesting.

The arrogance of a paradigm exceeding its evidence

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Immune system, Stress

This 2018 commentary from the American College of Emergency Physicians by 7 physicians discussed the harm that will result from imposing a mandatory paradigm of sepsis treatment. I’ll quote sections that mention evidence:

“These metrics [for pneumonia treatment] had little evidentiary basis but led to an institutional-fostered culture of overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Have we learned from this folly or does a new sepsis guideline promote similar time-based treatment strategies with little direct supporting evidence?

Like the pneumonia quality measure, this resource-heavy care flows from an overreaching interpretation of evidence. Despite that evidence consistently fails to find a benefit of a single treatment strategy, the Surviving Sepsis Campaign continues to promote recommendations that bypass the individual clinician’s judgment.

Although well intentioned, the current sepsis bundles and the potential penalties associated with noncompliance lay a heavy weight on ED [emergency department] care absent evidence that a net benefit will follow. The proposed Surviving Sepsis Campaign abbreviated bundle heightens the burden by further restricting the time allotted for the identification and treatment of patients with suspected sepsis, all without any evidence of benefit or knowledge of the logistic consequences or cost.”

The paradigm’s promoters didn’t learn the appropriate lessons in the above page regarding “the sense of embarrassment and regret once experienced with the pneumonia quality metric.”

What do you think are the root causes of the Surviving Sepsis Campaign’s agenda?

  • Did it start with lawyers? Lawsuits can force hospitals into actions for which the primary reason is to avoid “the potential penalties associated with noncompliance.”
  • Is it due to governments? Governments can force hospitals into actions “without any evidence of benefit or knowledge of the logistic consequences or cost” when the hospitals accept government reimbursement.
  • Did it start with other groups of unaccountable people who think they know better than everyone else about how others should act?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0196064418306073 “The 2018 Surviving Sepsis Campaign’s Treatment Bundle: When Guidelines Outpace the Evidence Supporting Their Use” (not freely available)

Epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of ovarian disease

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This 2018 Washington rodent study investigated ovarian disease in F3 great-granddaughters caused by their F0 great-grandmothers’ exposures to DDT or vinclozolin while pregnant:

“Two of the most prevalent ovarian diseases affecting women’s fertility and health are Primary Ovarian Insufficiency (POI) and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS). POI is characterized by a marked reduction in the primordial follicle pool of oocytes and the induction of menopause prior to age 40. POI currently affects approximately 1% of female population. While genetic causes can be ascribed to a minority of patients, around 90% of POI cases are considered idiopathic, with no apparent genetic link nor known cause.

PCOS is a multi-faceted disease that affects 6-18% of women. It is characterized by infrequent ovulation or anovulation, high androgen levels in the blood, and the presence of multiple persistent ovarian cysts.

For both PCOS and POI other underlying causes such as epigenetic transgenerational inheritance of disease susceptibility have seldom been considered. Epigenetic transgenerational inheritance is defined as “the germline transmission of epigenetic information and phenotypic change across generations in the absence of any continued direct environmental exposure or genetic manipulation.” Epigenetic factors include:

    • DNA methylation,
    • Histone modifications,
    • Expression of noncoding RNA,
    • RNA methylation, and
    • Alterations in chromatin structure.

The majority of transgenerational studies have examined sperm transmission of epigenetic changes due to limitations in oocyte numbers for efficient analysis.

There was no increase in ovarian disease in direct fetal exposed F1 [grandmothers] or germline exposed F2 [mothers] generation vinclozolin or DDT lineage rats compared to controls.

F3 generation ovarian disease

The transgenerational molecular mechanism is distinct and involves the germline (sperm or egg) having an altered epigenome that following fertilization may modify the embryonic stem cells epigenome and transcriptome. This subsequently impacts the epigenetics and transcriptome of all somatic cell types derived from these stem cells.

Therefore, all somatic cells in the transgenerational [F3] animal have altered epigenomes and transcriptomes and those sensitive to this alteration will be susceptible to develop disease. The F3 generation can have disease while the F1 and F2 generations do not, due to this difference in the molecular mechanisms involved.

The epimutations and gene expression differences observed are present in granulosa cells in the late pubertal female rats at 22-24 days of age, which is long before any visible signs of ovarian disease are detectable. This indicates that the underlying factors that can contribute to adult-onset diseases like PCOS and POI appear to be present early in life.

Ancestral exposure to toxicants is a risk factor that must be considered in the molecular etiology of ovarian disease.”

1. The study highlighted a great opportunity for researchers of any disease that frequently has an “idiopathic” diagnosis. It said a lot about research priorities that “around 90% of POI cases are considered idiopathic, with no apparent genetic link nor known cause.”

It isn’t sufficiently explanatory for physicians to continue using categorization terminology from thousands of years ago. Science has progressed enough with measured evidence to discard the “idiopathic” category and express probabilistic understanding of causes.

2. One of this study’s coauthors made a point worth repeating in The imperative of human transgenerational studies: What’s keeping researchers from making a significant difference in their fields with human epigenetic transgenerational inheritance studies?

3. Parts of the study’s Discussion section weren’t supported by its evidence. The study didn’t demonstrate:

  • That “all somatic cells in the transgenerational animal have altered epigenomes and transcriptomes”; and
  • The precise “molecular mechanisms involved” that exactly explain why “the F3 generation can have disease while the F1 and F2 generations do not.”

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15592294.2018.1521223 “Environmental Toxicant Induced Epigenetic Transgenerational Inheritance of Ovarian Pathology and Granulosa Cell Epigenome and Transcriptome Alterations: Ancestral Origins of Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and Primary Ovarian Insuf[f]iency” (not freely available)

The imperative of human transgenerational studies

gettingwell4 4-5 stars Advanced knowledge, Epigenetics, Stress ,

The coauthor of:

pointed out the opportunity for the researchers of A seasonal epigenetic effect of conception on BMI to have their work make a difference in their field:

“The ability of environmental epigenetics to promote an adaptive phenotype to cold has impacts on evolution. However, the impacts would be far greater if the phenomenon was transgenerational.

Future studies are now needed to determine whether the cold-induced thrifty metabolic phenotype is transmitted to subsequent generations. If exposure not only impacts the health of offspring, but also of all subsequent generations, the impact is significant.”

Every human alive today has observable lasting epigenetic effects caused by environmental factors:

  • During the earliest parts of our lives;
  • From our parents’ exposures and experiences before we’re conceived – many of which are inadequately researched; and
  • Potentially from some of our earlier ancestors’ exposures and experiences.

Aren’t animal studies’ evidence for epigenetic transgenerational inheritance sufficient to compel serious human follow-on research efforts by research sponsors and study designers?

The same comments about epigenetic effects caused by temperature potentially inherited by multiple human generations can also be made about other environmental factors, such as:

  • Nutrition,
  • Toxins – the commentator’s usual area of study, and
  • Stress.

I hope that these researchers value their professions enough to make a difference with this or other areas of their expertise. And that sponsors won’t thwart researchers’ desires for difference-making science by putting them into endless funding queues.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-018-0187-3 “Preconception cold-induced epigenetic inheritance” (not freely available)

Reversing epigenetic changes with CRISPR/Cas9

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This 2018 Chinese review highlighted areas in which CRISPR/Cas9 technology has, is, and could be applied to rewrite epigenetic changes:

“CRISPR/Cas9-mediated epigenome editing holds a great promise for epigenetic studies and therapeutics.

It could be used to selectively modify epigenetic marks at a given locus to explore mechanisms of how targeted epigenetic alterations would affect transcription regulation and cause subsequent phenotype changes. For example, inducing histone methylation or acetylation at the Fosb locus in the mice brain reward region, nucleus accumbens, could affect relevant transcription network and thus control behavioral responses evoked by drug and stress.

Epigenome editing has the potential for epigenetic treatment, especially for the disorders with abnormal gene imprinting or epigenetic marks. Targeted epigenetic silencing or reactivation of the mutant allele could be a potential therapeutic approach for diseases such as Rett syndrome and Huntington’s disease.

Noncoding RNA plays important roles in gene imprinting and chromatin remodeling. CRISPR/Cas9 has been shown to be potential for manipulating noncoding RNA expression, including microRNA, long noncoding RNA, and miRNA families and clusters.

In vivo overexpression of the Yamanaka factors have proven to be able to fully or partially help somatic cells to regain pluripotency in situ. These rejuvenated cells would subsequently differentiate again to replace the lost cell types.”

The last paragraph was described in The epigenetic clock theory of aging as a promising technique:

“To date, the most effective in vitro intervention against epigenetic ageing is achieved through expression of Yamanaka factors, which convert somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells, thereby completely resetting the epigenetic clock.”

The reviewers cited three references for in vivo studies of this technique. Overall, I didn’t see that any of the review’s references were in vivo human studies.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6079388/ “Novel Epigenetic Techniques Provided by the CRISPR/Cas9 System”

The epigenetic clock now includes skin

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The originator of the 2013 epigenetic clock improved its coverage with this 2018 UCLA human study:

“We present a new DNA methylation-based biomarker (based on 391 CpGs) that was developed to accurately measure the age of human fibroblasts, keratinocytes, buccal cells, endothelial cells, skin and blood samples. We also observe strong age correlations in sorted neurons, glia, brain, liver, and bone samples.

The skin & blood clock outperforms widely used existing biomarkers when it comes to accurately measuring the age of an individual based on DNA extracted from skin, dermis, epidermis, blood, saliva, buccal swabs, and endothelial cells. Thus, the biomarker can also be used for forensic and biomedical applications involving human specimens.

The biomarker applies to the entire age span starting from newborns, e.g. DNAm of cord blood samples correlates with gestational week.

Furthermore, the skin & blood clock confirms the effect of lifestyle and demographic variables on epigenetic aging. Essentially it highlights a significant trend of accelerated epigenetic aging with sub-clinical indicators of poor health.

Conversely, reduced aging rate is correlated with known health-improving features such as physical exercise, fish consumption, high carotenoid levels. As with the other age predictors, the skin & blood clock is also able to predict time to death.

Collectively, these features show that while the skin & blood clock is clearly superior in its performance on skin cells, it crucially retained all the other features that are common to other existing age estimators.”

http://www.aging-us.com/article/101508/text “Epigenetic clock for skin and blood cells applied to Hutchinson Gilford Progeria Syndrome and ex vivo studies”

An introduction to the study highlighted several items:

“Although the skin-blood clock was derived from significantly less samples (~900) than Horvath’s clock (~8000 samples), it was found to more accurately predict chronological age, not only across fibroblasts and skin, but also across blood, buccal and saliva tissue. A potential factor driving this improved accuracy in blood could be related to the approximate 18-fold increase in genomic coverage afforded by using Illumina 450k/850k beadarrays.

It serves as a roadmap for future clock studies, pointing towards the importance of constructing tissue or cell-type specific epigenetic clocks, to more accurately measure biological aging in the given tissue/cell-type, and therefore with the potential to be more informative of disease-risk or the success of disease interventions in the tissue or cell-type of interest.”

http://www.aging-us.com/article/101533/text “Epigenetic clocks galore: a new improved clock predicts age-acceleration in Hutchinson Gilford Progeria Syndrome patients”

Epigenetic factors affecting female rat sexual behavior

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This 2018 Baltimore/Montreal rodent study found:

“If sexually naïve females have their formative sexually rewarding experiences paired with the same male, they will recognize that male and display mate-guarding behavior towards him in the presence of a female competitor. Female rats that display mate-guarding behavior also show enhanced activation of oxytocin and vasopressin neurons in the supraoptic and paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus.

We examined the effect of a lysine-specific demethylase-1 inhibitor to block the action of demethylase enzymes and maintain the methylation state of corresponding genes. Female rats treated with the demethylase inhibitor failed to show any measure of mate guarding, whereas females treated with vehicle displayed mate guarding behavior. Demethylase inhibitor treatment also blocked the ability of familiar male cues to activate oxytocin and vasopressin neurons, whereas vehicle-treated females showed this enhanced activation.”

General principles and their study-specific illustrations were:

“Histone modifications are a key element in gene regulation through chromatin remodeling. Histone methylation / demethylation does not have straightforward transcriptional outcomes as do other histone modifications, like acetylation, which is almost invariably associated with transcriptional activation.

What is of vital importance in regards to histone methylation / demethylation is the pattern of methylation that is established. Patterns of methylation incorporate both methylated and demethylated residues, and are what ultimately play a role in transcriptional outcomes.

In the present study, inhibiting LSD1 demethylase enzymes disrupted the ability of cells to properly establish histone methylation / demethylation patterns, thus creating a deficit in the cells’ ability to transcribe the gene products necessary for the enhanced induction of OT, AVP, and the subsequent mate-guarding behaviors we observed. This study is the first to demonstrate a definitive role of epigenetic histone modifications in a conditioned sexual response.”

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0031938418303421 “Inhibition of lysine-specific demethylase enzyme disrupts sexually conditioned mate guarding in the female rat” (not freely available)

Hijacking the epigenetic clock paradigm

gettingwell4 < 0 Detracted from science, Epigenetics, Telomeres

This 2018 German human study’s last sentence was:

“Additionally we found an association between DNAm [DNA methylation] age acceleration and rLTL [relative leukocyte telomere length], suggesting that this epigenetic clock, at least partially and possibly better than other epigenetic clocks, reflects biological age.”

Statements in the study that contradicted, qualified, and limited the concluding sentence included:

“The epigenetic clock seems to be mostly independent from the mitotic clock as measured by the rLTL.

It could be possible that associations are confounded due to short age ranges or non-continuous age distribution, as displayed in the BASE-II cohort (no participants between the age of 38 and 59 years). [see the below graphic]

The BASE-II is a convenience sample and participants have been shown to be positively selected with respect to education, health and cognition.

Samples in which DNAm age and chronological age differed more than three standard deviations from the mean were excluded (N=19).

While the original publication employed eight CpG sites for DNAm age estimation, we found that one of these sites did not significantly improve chronological age prediction in BASE-II. Thus, we reduced the number of sites considered to seven in the present study and adapted the algorithm to calculate DNAm age.

  • Horvath described a subset of 353 methylation sites predicting an individual’s chronological age with high accuracy..
  • Even though the available methods using more CpG sites to estimate DNAm age predict chronological age with higher accuracy..
  • It is not clear how much of the deviation between chronological age and DNAm age reflects measurement error/low number of methylation sites and which proportion can be attributed to biological age.

Due to the statistical method employed, we encountered a systematic deviation of DNAm age in our dataset.”

Findings that aren’t warranted by the data is an all-too-common problem with published research. This study illustrated how researcher hypothesis-seeking behavior – that disregarded what they knew or should have known – can combine with a statistics package to produce almost any finding.

It reminded me of A skin study that could have benefited from preregistration that made a similar methodological blunder:

The barbell shape of the subjects’ age distribution wouldn’t make sense if the researchers knew they were going to later use the epigenetic clock method.

The researchers did so, although the method’s instructive study noted:

“The standard deviation of age has a strong relationship with age correlation”

and provided further details in “The age correlation in a data set is determined by the standard deviation of age” section.

Didn’t the researchers, their organizations, and their sponsors realize that this study’s problematic design and performance could misdirect readers away from the valid epigenetic clock evidence they referenced? What purposes did it serve for them to publish this study?

https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/gerona/gly184/5076188 “Epigenetic clock and relative telomere length represent largely different aspects of aging in the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II)” (not freely available)

Wouldn’t it be nice?

gettingwell4 0-1 star Wasted resources, Memory , ,

Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long?
And wouldn’t it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong?

You know it’s gonna make it that much better
When we can say goodnight and stay together

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new?
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through?

Happy times together we’ve been spending
I wish that every kiss was neverending
Oh wouldn’t it be nice?

Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true
Baby then there wouldn’t be a single thing we couldn’t do
We could be married (we could be married)
And then we’d be happy (and then we’d be happy)
Oh wouldn’t it be nice?

You know it seems the more we talk about it
It only makes it worse to live without it
But lets talk about it
Oh wouldn’t it be nice?

Good night my baby
Sleep tight my baby

From What was not, is not, and will never be:

We long for what was and is impossible.