TY - JOUR
T1 - Painful diabetic neuropathy is associated with accelerated epigenetic aging
AU - Kwiatkowska, Katarzyna Malgorzata
AU - Garagnani, Paolo
AU - Bonafe, Massimiliano
AU - Bacalini, Maria Giulia
AU - Calzari, Luciano
AU - Gentilini, Davide
AU - Ziegler, Dan
AU - Gerrits, Monique M.
AU - Faber, Catharina G.
AU - Malik, Rayaz A.
AU - Marchi, Margherita
AU - Salvi, Erika
AU - Lauria, Giuseppe
AU - Pirazzini, Chiara
PY - 2025/1/1
Y1 - 2025/1/1
N2 - About one out of two diabetic patients develop diabetic neuropathy (DN), of these 20% experience neuropathic pain (NP) leading to individual, social, and health-economic burden. Risk factors for NP are largely unknown; however, premature aging was recently associated with several chronic pain disorders. DNA methylation-based biological age (DNAm) is associated with disease risk, morbidity, and mortality in different clinical settings. The purpose of this work was to study, for the first time, whether biological age is involved in pain development in a huge cohort of DN patients with neuropathy assessed by anatomopathological assay (99 painful (PDN), 132 painless (PLDN) patients, 84 controls (CTRL)). Six subsets of DNAm biomarkers were calculated to evaluate NP-associated changes in epigenetic aging, telomere shortening, blood cell count estimates, and plasma protein surrogates. We observed pain-related acceleration of epigenetic age (DNAmAgeHannum, DNAmGrimAgeBasedOnPredictedAge, DNAmAgeSkinBloodClock), pace of aging (DunedinPoAm), and shortening of telomeres between PDN and PLDN patients. PDN showed decreased predicted counts of B lymphocytes, naive and absolute CD8 T cells, and increased granulocyte counts. Several surrogates of plasma proteins were significantly different (GHR, MMP1, THBS2, PAPPA, TGF-alpha, GDF8, EDA, MPL, CCL21) in PDNs compared to PLDNs. These results provide the first evidence of an acceleration of biological aging in patients with painful compared to painless DN. This achievement has been possible thanks to the state of the art clinical phenotyping of the enrolled patients. Our findings indicate that the aging process may be directly involved in the PDN progression and in general health degeneration in the T2DM patients. Therefore, it is possible to hypothesize that the administration of effective antiaging drugs could slow down or even block the disease advancement.
AB - About one out of two diabetic patients develop diabetic neuropathy (DN), of these 20% experience neuropathic pain (NP) leading to individual, social, and health-economic burden. Risk factors for NP are largely unknown; however, premature aging was recently associated with several chronic pain disorders. DNA methylation-based biological age (DNAm) is associated with disease risk, morbidity, and mortality in different clinical settings. The purpose of this work was to study, for the first time, whether biological age is involved in pain development in a huge cohort of DN patients with neuropathy assessed by anatomopathological assay (99 painful (PDN), 132 painless (PLDN) patients, 84 controls (CTRL)). Six subsets of DNAm biomarkers were calculated to evaluate NP-associated changes in epigenetic aging, telomere shortening, blood cell count estimates, and plasma protein surrogates. We observed pain-related acceleration of epigenetic age (DNAmAgeHannum, DNAmGrimAgeBasedOnPredictedAge, DNAmAgeSkinBloodClock), pace of aging (DunedinPoAm), and shortening of telomeres between PDN and PLDN patients. PDN showed decreased predicted counts of B lymphocytes, naive and absolute CD8 T cells, and increased granulocyte counts. Several surrogates of plasma proteins were significantly different (GHR, MMP1, THBS2, PAPPA, TGF-alpha, GDF8, EDA, MPL, CCL21) in PDNs compared to PLDNs. These results provide the first evidence of an acceleration of biological aging in patients with painful compared to painless DN. This achievement has been possible thanks to the state of the art clinical phenotyping of the enrolled patients. Our findings indicate that the aging process may be directly involved in the PDN progression and in general health degeneration in the T2DM patients. Therefore, it is possible to hypothesize that the administration of effective antiaging drugs could slow down or even block the disease advancement.
KW - Biological aging
KW - Aging biomarker
KW - Epigenetic clock
KW - Neuropathic pain
KW - Diabetic neuropathy
KW - DNA methylation
KW - HOMEOSTATIC CHEMOKINES CCL19
KW - GILFORD PROGERIA SYNDROME
KW - PROTEIN-A DEFICIENCY
KW - GROWTH-HORMONE
KW - TELOMERE LENGTH
KW - GENE-EXPRESSION
KW - AGE
KW - BLOOD
KW - CCL21
KW - MICE
U2 - 10.1007/s11357-025-01516-w
DO - 10.1007/s11357-025-01516-w
M3 - Article
SN - 2509-2715
JO - Geroscience
JF - Geroscience
ER -