Associations between medium- and long-term exposure to air temperature and epigenetic age acceleration

Abstract

Climate change poses a serious threat to human health worldwide, while aging populations increase. However, no study has ever investigated the effects of air temperature on epigenetic age acceleration. This study involved 1,725 and 1,877 participants from the population-based KORA F4 (2006–2008) and follow-up FF4 (2013–2014) studies, respectively, conducted in Augsburg, Germany. The difference between epigenetic age and chronological age was referred to as epigenetic age acceleration and reflected by Horvath’s epigenetic age acceleration (HorvathAA), Hannum’s epigenetic age acceleration (HannumAA), PhenoAge acceleration (PhenoAA), GrimAge acceleration (GrimAA), and Epigenetic Skin and Blood Age acceleration (SkinBloodAA). Daily air temperature was estimated using hybrid spatiotemporal regression-based models. To explore the medium- and long-term effects of air temperature modeled in time and space on epigenetic age acceleration, we applied generalized estimating equations (GEE) with distributed lag non-linear models, and GEE, respectively. We found that high temperature exposure based on the 8-week moving average air temperature (97.5th percentile of temperature compared to median temperature) was associated with increased HorvathAA, HannumAA, GrimAA, and SkinBloodAA: 1.83 (95% CI: 0.29–3.37), 11.71 (95% CI: 8.91–14.50), 2.26 (95% CI: 1.03–3.50), and 5.02 (95% CI: 3.42–6.63) years, respectively. Additionally, we found consistent results with high temperature exposure based on the 4-week moving average air temperature was associated with increased HannumAA, GrimAA, and SkinBloodAA: 9.18 (95% CI: 6.60–11.76), 1.78 (95% CI: 0.66–2.90), and 4.07 (95% CI: 2.56–5.57) years, respectively. For the spatial variation in annual average temperature, a 1 °C increase was associated with an increase in all five measures of epigenetic age acceleration (HorvathAA: 0.41 [95% CI: 0.24–0.57], HannumAA: 2.24 [95% CI: 1.95–2.53], PhenoAA: 0.32 [95% CI: 0.05–0.60], GrimAA: 0.24 [95%: 0.11–0.37], and SkinBloodAA: 1.17 [95% CI: 1.00–1.35] years). In conclusion, our results provide first evidence that medium- and long-term exposures to high air temperature affect increases in epigenetic age acceleration.