Social
Association between social support and DNA methylation aging: an explorative study using NHANES 1999-2002 cohort Hanyang Shen* Hanyang Shen Nicole Gladish Belinda Needham David Rehkopf
Social support has been suggested by decades of research to be a consequential influence on health outcomes. Studies have reported a lack of social support increasing the risk of CVD, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and mortality. However, epigenetic aging, especially DNA methylation aging, has not been fully explored as outcomes, as it is a newly developed concept since 2013. This study examines the correlations between multiple social support measurements and a collection of DNA methylation biomarkers in a multiracial sample. The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) is a national representative cohort of the noninstitutionalized US population. The sample with available DNA methylation data includes a random selection of one-half of eligible non-Hispanic white respondents aged 50 years and older (n=1,071) and all eligible non-Hispanic black (n=566), Mexican American (n=730), and other race (n=79) respondents aged 50 years and older from the 1999-2002 cohort. The Illumina Infinium Methylation EPIC Assay was used to measure DNA methylation sites per sample. Quality control steps include outlier removal, color correction, background subtraction, and normalization. The DNA methylation variables calculated include 13 clocks (Horvath, Hannum, SkinBlood, PhenoAge, telomere, Yang, Zhang, Lin, Weidner, VidalBralo, DunedinPoAM, GrimAge, and GrimAge2) and 10 mortality-related biomarkers (packyears, cystatin C, Adrenomedullin, Beta-2 microglobulin, logC-reactive protein, plasminogen activator inhibitor antigen, log HbA1C, leptin, TIMP metallopeptidase inhibitor 1, and growth differentiation factor 15). Social support exposures include perceived emotional support, perceived financial support, received support, and marital status. After controlling for covariates, we expect social support variables to be more related to clocks trained by morbidity and mortality and related to biomarkers of inflammation, a system more sensitive to psychosocial stress.