ArticleJournal of affective disorders2024
Associations of depression and anxiety symptoms in childhood and adolescence with epigenetic aging.
Article in Journal of affective disorders, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- Methylome-wide association study in blood suggests cell type-specific relationships between DNA methylation and lifetime anxiety.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Adolescent depression, childhood maltreatment, and the immune system; a role for epigenetic aging?Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2025Article
- Associations between epigenetic age and brain age in young people.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Review
- Neighborhood opportunity and residential instability: associations with mental health in middle childhood.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2025Article
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundChildhood anxiety and depression symptoms are potential risk factors for accelerated biological aging. In child and adolescent twins, we tested whether these symptoms were associated with DNA methylation (DNAm) aging, a measure of biological aging.
methods276 twins (135 pairs, 6 singletons) had DNAm assayed from saliva in middle childhood (mean = 7.8 years). Residuals of five different DNAm age estimates regressed on chronological age were used to indicate accelerated aging. Anxiety and depression symptoms were assessed in middle childhood and early adolescence using the Child Behavior Checklist. Mixed effect regression was used to examine potential relationships between anxiety or depression symptoms, and accelerated DNAm age. MZ twin difference analysis was then utilized to determine if associations were environmentally-driven or due to genetic or shared-environment confounding.
resultsAnxiety and depression symptoms were not associated with accelerated DNAm aging in middle childhood. In early adolescence, only the Wu clock was significant and indicated that each one symptom increase in anxiety symptoms had an associated age acceleration of 0.03 years (~0.4 months; p = 0.019). MZ twin difference analysis revealed non-significant within-pair effects, suggesting genetic and shared environmental influences. LIMITATIONS: Sample is predominantly male and white. Generalizability to other populations may be limited.
conclusionAccelerated DNAm aging of the Wu clock in middle childhood is associated with anxiety, but not depression, symptoms in early adolescence. Further, this association may be the result of shared genetic and environmental influences. Accelerated DNAm aging may serve as an early risk factor or predictor of later anxiety symptoms.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.