The epigenetic landscape of age-related diseases: the geroscience perspective.
Biogerontology
; 18(4): 549-559, 2017 08.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-28352958
ABSTRACT
In this review, we summarize current knowledge regarding the epigenetics of age-related diseases, focusing on those studies that have described DNA methylation landscape in cardio-vascular diseases, musculoskeletal function and frailty. We stress the importance of adopting the conceptual framework of "geroscience", which starts from the observation that advanced age is the major risk factor for several of these pathologies and aims at identifying the mechanistic links between aging and age-related diseases. DNA methylation undergoes a profound remodeling during aging, which includes global hypomethylation of the genome, hypermethylation at specific loci and an increase in inter-individual variation and in stochastic changes of DNA methylation values. These epigenetic modifications can be an important contributor to the development of age-related diseases, but our understanding on the complex relationship between the epigenetic signatures of aging and age-related disease is still poor. The most relevant results in this field come from the use of the so called "epigenetics clocks" in cohorts of subjects affected by age-related diseases. We report these studies in final section of this review.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Biological Clocks
/
Aging
/
Cardiovascular Diseases
/
Musculoskeletal Diseases
/
DNA Methylation
/
Biomedical Research
/
Epigenesis, Genetic
/
Frailty
/
Geriatrics
Type of study:
Diagnostic_studies
/
Etiology_studies
/
Prognostic_studies
/
Risk_factors_studies
Limits:
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
Biogerontology
Journal subject:
GERIATRIA
Year:
2017
Type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Italy