Adolescent disordered eating and epigenetic age acceleration.

Area of Science:

• Psychiatry
• Developmental Psychology
• Epigenetics

Background:

• Disordered eating has widespread health consequences affecting multiple body systems.
• Biological aging, measured by epigenetic age acceleration, is a potential pathway linking disordered eating to poor health.
• Previous research explored epigenetic age acceleration in psychiatric disorders, but not eating disorders.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the association between disordered eating behaviors in adolescence and epigenetic age acceleration.
• To examine longitudinal associations between disordered eating at ages 14 and 17 and epigenetic age acceleration at age 17.

Main Methods:

• A community cohort of 797 individuals was studied.
• Disordered eating was assessed using the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire (EDE-Q) and behavioral items (restriction, bingeing, purging).
• Epigenetic age acceleration was measured using multiple clocks (DunedinPACE, PhenoAge, GrimAge, Horvath, Hannum).

Main Results:

• Restriction at age 14 was longitudinally associated with a small increase in DunedinPACE (β=0.09) after FDR correction.
• No significant associations were found with other epigenetic clocks (PhenoAge, GrimAge, Horvath, Hannum).
• The association between age 14 restriction and DunedinPACE was partially mediated by higher BMI at ages 14 and 17. No concurrent associations were observed at age 17.

Conclusions:

• Third-generation epigenetic clocks may capture some long-term biological correlates of adolescent disordered eating.
• The observed effect size was small, suggesting limited clinical relevance.
• Further research with larger samples and multiple time points is needed to confirm findings and enhance causal inference.