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A new blood based epigenetic age predictor for adolescents and young adults
Håvard Aanes1, Øyvind Bleka1, Pål Skage Dahlberg1
1Division of Laboratory Medicine, Department of Forensic Sciences, Oslo University Hospital, Nydalen, P.O. Box 4950, 0424, Oslo, Norway.
Insights
A new biological method, the Predictor for Adolescents and Young Adults (PAYA), uses DNA methylation to accurately estimate age in youth. This epigenetic clock offers a vital tool for age assessment where documentation is lacking.
Area of Science:
- Biomarkers and Epigenetics
- Forensic Science and Criminology
- Pediatric Health
Background:
- Over a quarter of children worldwide lack birth documentation, necessitating reliable biological age estimation methods.
- Current epigenetic clocks for age prediction have limitations, particularly for adolescents and young adults due to age-related DNA methylation variability.
- DNA methylation is a key biomarker for age assessment, with millions of sites in the human genome exhibiting age-dependent changes.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and validate a novel epigenetic clock, the Predictor for Adolescents and Young Adults (PAYA), specifically designed for accurate chronological age prediction in this demographic.
- To assess the impact of different data preprocessing techniques on the performance of the epigenetic clock.
Main Methods:
- Development of the PAYA clock utilizing 267 CpG methylation sites.
- Comparison of various preprocessing approaches to optimize prediction accuracy.
- Validation of the PAYA clock on an independent dataset of 18-year-old individuals.
Main Results:
- The PAYA clock achieved a median absolute deviation of just under 0.7 years in an independent validation dataset.
- The study identified optimal preprocessing methods for enhancing the epigenetic clock's predictive performance.
- The developed tool demonstrates high accuracy for age assessment in adolescents and young adults.
Conclusions:
- The PAYA epigenetic clock provides a promising biological tool for estimating the chronological age of adolescents and young adults, addressing a critical need for undocumented individuals.
- Further research is required to establish the robustness of PAYA across diverse populations, geographical locations, and environmental conditions, as well as in disease contexts.
Abstract:
Children have special rights for protection compared to adults in our society. However, more than 1/4 of children globally have no documentation of their date of birth. Hence, there is a pressing need to develop biological methods for chronological age prediction, robust to differences in genetics, psychosocial events and physical living conditions. At present, DNA methylation is the most promising biological biomarker applied for age assessment. The human genome contains around 28 million DNA methylation sites, many of which change with age. Several epigenetic clocks accurately predict chronological age using methylation levels at age associated GpG-sites. However, variation in DNA methylation increases with age, and there is no epigenetic clock specifically designed for adolescents and young adults. Here we present a novel age Predictor for Adolescents and Young Adults (PAYA), using 267 CpG methylation sites to assess the chronological age of adolescents and young adults. We compared different preprocessing approaches and investigated the effect on prediction performance of the epigenetic clock. We evaluated performance using an independent validation data set consisting of 18-year-old individuals, where we obtained a median absolute deviation of just below 0.7 years. This tool may be helpful in age assessment of adolescents and young adults. However, there is a need to investigate the robustness of the age predictor across geographical and disease populations as well as environmental effects.
