northwestern | Epigenetic age is a new way to measure your biological age. When your biological (epigenetic) age is older than your chronological age, you are at increased risk for getting and dying of cancer, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study.
And the bigger the difference between the two ages, the higher your risk of dying of cancer.
“This could become a new early warning sign of cancer,” said senior author Dr. Lifang Hou, who led the study. “The discrepancy between the two ages appears to be a promising tool that could be used to develop an early detection blood test for cancer.”
Hou is chief of cancer epidemiology and prevention in preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and co-leader of the cancer prevention program at the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center of Northwestern University.
“People who are healthy have a very small difference between their epigenetic/biological age and chronological age,” Hou said. “People who develop cancer have a large difference and people who die from cancer have a difference even larger than that. Our evidence showed a clear trend.”
A person’s epigenetic age is calculated based on an algorithm measuring 71 blood DNA methylation markers that could be modified by a person’s environment, including environmental chemicals, obesity, exercise and diet. This test is not commercially available but is currently being studied by academic researchers, including a team at Northwestern.
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