Abstract
Age is a major risk factor for severe outcome of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19). In this study, we followed the hypothesis that particularly patients with accelerated epigenetic age are affected by severe outcomes of COVID-19. We investigated various DNA methylation datasets of blood samples with epigenetic aging signatures and performed targeted bisulfite amplicon sequencing. Overall, epigenetic clocks closely correlated with the chronological age of patients, either with or without acute respiratory distress syndrome. Furthermore, lymphocytes did not reveal significantly accelerated telomere attrition. Thus, these biomarkers cannot reliably predict higher risk for severe COVID-19 infection in elderly patients.
Highlights
The clinical manifestation of COVID-19 is very heterogeneous
Our results do not provide evidence that severe outcome of COVID-19 is associated with accelerated epigenetic age or significantly shortened telomere length
This is in contrast to a recent study that indicated that epigenetic age was accelerated in patients with severe COVID-19 infections [8]
Summary
The clinical manifestation of COVID-19 is very heterogeneous. Some patients remain asymptomatic or have only mild symptoms throughout the course of infection, whereas others experience severe disease with hospitalization or even death [1]. It is conceivable that biological age provides an even better measure for risk assessment than chronological (or calendarian) age [4]. The process of biological aging is reflected by molecular hallmarks, which include epigenetic modifications. Age-associated epigenetic modifications are reflected by highly reproducible DNA methylation changes at specific CG dinucleotides (CpG sites). There is evidence that the epigenetic age of blood does reflect chronological age and aspects of biological age; an increased epigenetic age is associated with higher all-cause mortality and higher risk for various age-associated comorbidities [6,7]. We followed the hypothesis that accelerated epigenetic age increases susceptibility to severe COVID-19 infections that require hospitalization [3,8]
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