Background: Assessing functional ability is an important component of understanding healthy aging. Objective measures of functional ability include grip strength, gait speed, sit-to-stand time, and 6-min walk distance. Using samples from a weight loss clinical trial in older adults with obesity, we examined the association between changes in physical function and DNA-methylation-based biological age at baseline and 12 weeks in 16 individuals. Peripheral blood DNA methylation was measured (pre/post) with the Illumina HumanMethylationEPIC array and the Hannum, Horvath, and PhenoAge DNA methylation age clocks were used. Linear regression models adjusted for chronological age and sex tested the relationship between DNA methylation age and grip strength, gait speed, sit-to-stand, and 6-min walk.
Results: Participant mean weight loss was 4.6 kg, and DNA methylation age decreased 0.8, 1.1, and 0.5 years using the Hannum, Horvath, and PhenoAge DNA methylation clocks respectively. Mean grip strength increased 3.2 kg. Decreased Hannum methylation age was significantly associated with increased grip strength (β = -0.30, p = 0.04), and increased gait speed (β = 0.02, p = 0.05), in adjusted models. Similarly, decreased methylation age using the PhenoAge clock was associated with significantly increased gait speed (β = 0.02, p = 0.04). A decrease in Horvath DNA methylation age and increase in physical functional ability did not demonstrate a significant association.
Conclusions: The observed relationship between increased physical functional ability and decreased biological age using DNA methylation clocks demonstrate the potential utility of DNA methylation clocks to assess interventional approaches to improve health in older obese adults.
Trial registration: National Institute on Aging (NIA), NCT03104192. Posted April 7, 2017, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03104192.
Keywords: Aging; Anti-aging; DNA methylation; Functional ability; Healthy aging; Methylation age; Methylation clock.