Association of plasma metabolites with epigenetic age acceleration: a two-sample Mendelian randomization study

Epigenetic age acceleration (EAA) is a biomarker of biological aging associated with multiple diseases. Plasma metabolites are potential targets for disease prevention. Therefore, our study aims to investigate the association between plasma metabolites and EAA.

Statistics of plasma metabolites and EAA were obtained from the GWAS database. After rigorously screening the instrumental variables, we applied five Mendelian randomization methods to evaluate the relationship between each metabolite and the EAA. The robustness of the results was verified by a series of sensitivity analyses, and metabolic pathway enrichment analysis was performed for significantly associated metabolites.

Our analysis identified 149 plasma metabolites associated with EAA (p < 0.05), including 46 metabolites associated with IEAA, 47 with HannumAge, 38 with GrimAge, and 41 with PhenoAge. Among these, palmitoylcarnitine levels remained correlated with EAA after multiple testing correction (P_FDR < 0.05). In the enrichment analysis, 13 metabolic pathways were associated with EAA. Among them, "cysteine and methionine metabolism" was identified as the most significantly enriched pathway (P_FDR < 0.1), and 3 metabolites in this pathway were correlated with EAA.

These results demonstrated that plasma metabolomics, particularly amino acid and lipid metabolism, were associated with EAA and aging. The "cysteine and methionine metabolism" pathway emerged as a potential mechanism of aging, and may underpin metabolic alterations during the aging process, and its metabolites, such as methionine, 5-methylthioadenosine, and α-ketobutyrate, may serve as intervention targets.