Research Paper|Volume 7, Issue 5|pp 334—339

Epigenetic age analysis of children who seem to evade aging

Richard F. Walker¹, Jia Sophie Liu², Brock A. Peters², Beate R. Ritz³, Timothy Wu^4,⁵, Roel A. Ophoff^4,⁵, Steve Horvath^4,⁶

¹Physician's Scientific and Regulatory Services, Inc., Indian Rocks Beach, FL 33785, USA
²Department of Research, Complete Genomics Inc. Mountain View CA94043 USA, BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen 518083, China
³Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
⁴Human Genetics, David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
⁵UCLA Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics, Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA
⁶Biostatistics, School of Public Health, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA

Received: March 18, 2015Accepted: May 13, 2015Published: May 15, 2015

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.100744

Copyright: © 2015 Walker et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

We previously reported the unusual case of a teenage girl stricken with multifocal developmental dysfunctions whose physical development was dramatically delayed resulting in her appearing to be a toddler or at best a preschooler, even unto the occasion of her death at the age of 20 years. Her life-long physician felt that the disorder was unique in the world and that future treatments for age-related diseases might emerge from its study. The objectives of our research were to determine if other such cases exist, and if so, whether aging is actually slowed. Of seven children characterized by dramatically slow developmental rates, five also had associated disorders displayed by the first case. All of the identified subjects were female. To objectively measure the age of blood tissue from these subjects, we used a highly accurate biomarker of aging known as “epigenetic clock” based on DNA methylation levels. No statistically significant differences in chronological and epigenetic ages were detected in any of the newly discovered cases.

Our study shows that a) there are multiple children who maintain the façade of persistent toddler-like features while aging from birth to young adulthood and b) blood tissue from these cases is not younger than expected.