Associations between alcohol use and accelerated biological ageing

Area of Science:

• Aging research
• Neuroscience
• Genetics

Background:

• Harmful alcohol use contributes to premature death and age-related diseases.
• Biological aging varies individually and may differ from chronological age.
• Biomarkers of biological aging, such as DNA methylation and brain structure, are clinically relevant.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the association between alcohol consumption phenotypes and brain and DNA methylation age estimates.
• To test for a causal effect of alcohol consumption and alcohol use disorder (AUD) on biological aging using Mendelian randomization.

Main Methods:

• Utilized data from UK Biobank and Generation Scotland (20,258 and 8051 individuals).
• Assessed alcohol consumption (units/week) and hazardous use (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test [AUDIT] scores).
• Employed Mendelian randomization (MR) to infer causality.

Main Results:

• Alcohol use consistently associated with higher predicted brain age and accelerated epigenetic aging (GrimAge and PhenoAge).
• MR analyses showed limited evidence for a causal effect of AUD on accelerated brain aging, driven by a single genetic variant.
• No evidence found for a causal effect of alcohol consumption levels on accelerated biological aging.

Conclusions:

• Alcohol consumption is associated with accelerated biological aging markers.
• Causality between alcohol use disorder and accelerated brain aging remains uncertain.
• Further research is needed to elucidate the mechanisms linking alcohol use to accelerated biological aging.