Author: Chaix R1, Alvarez-López MJ2, Fagny M3, Lemee L4, Regnault B4, Davidson RJ5, Lutz A6, Kaliman P7
Affiliation:
1Eco-Anthropologie et Ethnobiologie, UMR 7206 CNRS, MNHN, Univ Paris Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité, France. Electronic address: raphaelle.chaix@mnhn.fr.
2Unitat de Farmacologia, Facultat de Farmàcia, Institut de Biomedicina, Universitat de Barcelona (IBUB), Nucli Universitari de Pedralbes, Barcelone, 08028, Spain.
3Department of Biostatistics and Computational Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, 02115, USA; Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
4Plateforme de génotypage des eucaryotes, Biomics, CITECH, Institut Pasteur, 75015 Paris, France.
5Center for Healthy Minds, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 53703, USA.
6Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, INSERM U1028, CNRS UMR5292, Lyon 1 University, 69500 Lyon, France.
7Center for Mind and Brain, University of California Davis, Davis, CA 95618, USA. Electronic address: pkaliman@ucdavis.edu.
Conference/Journal: Psychoneuroendocrinology.
Date published: 2017 Aug 31
Other:
Volume ID: 85 , Pages: 210-214 , Special Notes: doi: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2017.08.016. [Epub ahead of print] , Word Count: 194
In this paper, we examined whether meditation practice influences the epigenetic clock, a strong and reproducible biomarker of biological aging, which is accelerated by cumulative lifetime stress and with age-related chronic diseases. Using the Illumina 450K array platform, we analyzed the DNA methylome from blood cells of long-term meditators and meditation-naïve controls to estimate their Intrinsic Epigenetic Age Acceleration (IEAA), using Horvath's calculator. IEAA was similar in both groups. However, controls showed a different IEAA trajectory with aging than meditators: older controls (age≥52) had significantly higher IEAAs compared with younger controls (age <52), while meditators were protected from this epigenetic aging effect. Notably, in the meditation group, we found a significant negative correlation between IEAA and the number of years of regular meditation practice. From our results, we hypothesize that the cumulative effects of a regular meditation practice may, in the long-term, help to slow the epigenetic clock and could represent a useful preventive strategy for age-related chronic diseases. Longitudinal randomized controlled trials in larger cohorts are warranted to confirm and further characterize these findings.
Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
KEYWORDS: Biological aging; Blood; Epigenetics; Methylation; Mindfulness; Stress
PMID: 28889075 DOI: 10.1016/j.psyneuen.2017.08.016
