Research suggests that accelerated aging is linked to higher rates of early-onset cancers. Longevity researchers say they want to slow biological aging to prevent chronic diseases, like cancers.
Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a severe and chronic psychiatric disorder with premature age-related physiological changes. However, numerous previous studies examined the epigenetic age acceleration in SCZ patients and yielded inconclusive results. In this study, we propose to explore the epigenetic age acceleration in drug-naive first-episode SCZ (FSCZ) patients and investigate whether epigenetic age acceleration is associated with antipsychotic treatment, psychotic symptoms, cognition, and subcortical volumes. We assessed the epigenetic age in 38 drug-naive FSCZ patients and 38 healthy controls by using three independent clocks, including Horvath, Hannum and Levine algorithms. The epigenetic age measurements in SCZ patients were repeated after receiving 8 weeks risperidone monotherapy. Our findings showed significantly positive correlations between epigenetic ages assessed by three clocks and chronological age in both FSCZ patients and healthy controls. Compared with healthy controls,
Adult survivors of pediatric Hodgkin lymphoma have accelerated epigenetic aging, and many have evidence of neurocognitive decline on standardized testing.