TY - JOUR T1 - DNA methylation age is associated with an altered hemostatic profile in a multi-ethnic meta-analysis. JF - Blood Y1 - 2018 A1 - Ward-Caviness, Cavin K A1 - Huffman, Jennifer E A1 - Evertt, Karl A1 - Germain, Marine A1 - van Dongen, Jenny A1 - Hill, W David A1 - Jhun, Min A A1 - Brody, Jennifer A A1 - Ghanbari, Mohsen A1 - Du, Lei A1 - Roetker, Nicholas S A1 - de Vries, Paul S A1 - Waldenberger, Melanie A1 - Gieger, Christian A1 - Wolf, Petra A1 - Prokisch, Holger A1 - Koenig, Wolfgang A1 - O'Donnell, Christopher J A1 - Levy, Daniel A1 - Liu, Chunyu A1 - Truong, Vinh A1 - Wells, Philip S A1 - Trégouët, David-Alexandre A1 - Tang, Weihong A1 - Morrison, Alanna C A1 - Boerwinkle, Eric A1 - Wiggins, Kerri L A1 - McKnight, Barbara A1 - Guo, Xiuqing A1 - Psaty, Bruce M A1 - Sotoodenia, Nona A1 - Boomsa, Dorret I A1 - Willemsen, Gonneke A1 - Ligthart, Lannie A1 - Deary, Ian J A1 - Zhao, Wei A1 - Ware, Erin B A1 - Kardia, Sharon L R A1 - van Meurs, Joyce B J A1 - Uitterlinden, André G A1 - Franco, Oscar H A1 - Eriksson, Per A1 - Franco-Cereceda, Anders A1 - Pankow, James S A1 - Johnson, Andrew D A1 - Gagnon, France A1 - Morange, Pierre-Emmanuel A1 - de Geus, Eco J C A1 - Starr, John M A1 - Smith, Jennifer A A1 - Dehghan, Abbas A1 - Björck, Hanna M A1 - Smith, Nicholas L A1 - Peters, Annette AB -

Many hemostatic factors are associated with age and age-related diseases, however much remains unknown about the biological mechanisms linking aging and hemostatic factors. DNA methylation is a novel means by which to assess epigenetic aging, which is a measure of age and the aging processes as determined by altered epigenetic states. We used a meta-analysis approach to examine the association between measures of epigenetic aging and hemostatic factors, as well as a clotting time measure. For fibrinogen, we used European and African-ancestry participants who were meta-analyzed separately and combined via a random effects meta-analysis. All other measures only included participants of European-ancestry. We found that 1-year higher extrinsic epigenetic age as compared to chronological age was associated with higher fibrinogen (0.004 g/L per year; 95% CI: 0.001, 0.007; P = 0.01) and plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (PAI-1; 0.13 U/mL per year; 95% CI: 0.07, 0.20; P = 6.6x10-5) concentrations as well as lower activated partial thromboplastin time, a measure of clotting time. We replicated PAI-1 associations using an independent cohort. To further elucidate potential functional mechanisms we associated epigenetic aging with expression levels of the PAI-1 protein encoding gene (SERPINE1) and the three fibrinogen subunit-encoding genes (FGA, FGG, and FGB), in both peripheral blood and aorta intima-media samples. We observed associations between accelerated epigenetic aging and transcription of FGG in both tissues. Collectively, our results indicate that accelerated epigenetic aging is associated with a pro-coagulation hemostatic profile, and that epigenetic aging may regulate hemostasis in part via gene transcription.

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