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Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 19|pp 19756—19765

Effects of estradiol on biological age measured using the glycan age index

Julija Jurić1, Wendy M. Kohrt2,3, Domagoj Kifer4, Kathleen M Gavin2,3, Marija Pezer1, Peter A. Nigrovic5,6, Gordan Lauc1,4
  • 1Genos Glycoscience Research Laboratory, Zagreb, Croatia
  • 2Division of Geriatric Medicine, School of Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO 80045, USA
  • 3Eastern Colorado VA Geriatric Research, Education and Clinical Center, Aurora, CO 80045, USA
  • 4Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Faculty of Pharmacy and Biochemistry, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
  • 5Division of Rheumatology, Inflammation, and Immunity, Brigham and Women´s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
  • 6Division of Immunology, Boston Children´s Hospital, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Received: June 26, 2020Accepted: August 25, 2020Published: October 13, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.104060

Copyright: © 2020 Jurić et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Glycan age is a recently developed biomarker based on glycans attached to immunoglobulin G (IgG). In large population cohorts, glycan age associates well with lifestyle and disease-risk biomarkers, while some studies suggested that glycan changes precede development of several age-associated diseases. In this study we evaluated effects of estrogen on the glycan age. Gonadal hormones were suppressed in 36 healthy young women by gonadotropin releasing hormone agonist therapy for 6 months. In 15 of them estradiol was supplemented, while 21 received placebo resulting in very low estrogen levels during intervention. IgG was isolated from plasma samples before intervention, after 6 months of intervention and after subsequent 4-month recovery. Deprivation of gonadal hormones resulted in median increase of glycan age for 9.1 years (IQR 6.8 – 11.5 years, p = 3.73×10-8), which was completely prevented by transdermal estradiol therapy (change in glycan age = -0.23 years, IQR (-2.20 – 2.98). After the recovery period glycan age returned to baseline values in both groups. These results suggest that IgG glycans and consequently also the glycan age are under strong influence of gonadal hormones and that estradiol therapy can prevent the increase of glycan age that occurs in the perimenopausal period.