Does Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) Age us?

Anti-ageing technology is gaining a huge amount of interest across a variety of scientific fields.  Over the last 7 years through our own Epigenetic research and analysis have identified key diet and lifestyle markers and tweaks that everyone can introduce into their day to day lives to reduce the ageing process.

First of all let us establish how we measure age. We need to look at a marker of age that can be altered, such as our biological age.

Measuring biological age through DNA methylation can give us a glimpse into the future.

DNA methylation has been argued to be related to all mortality in later life and therefore anything affecting it negatively will impact our future health.

The Muhdo Health team look at DNA methylation on genes such as PYCARD, PPARG, KPNA4, SMC4 amongst others, in fact our array covers over 950,000 cg sites.

During a biological age trial of 288 anonymised individuals a questionnaire was carried out to establish links to conditions, lifestyle, medications etc. and biological ageing. One area of concern was T2D and BMI.

>> Of the 288, 115 had been diagnosed with T2D, that groups average BMI was 28.84.

>> Of the 288, 173 did not have a diagnosis of T2D, and that groups average BMI was 28.53.

In general, there was a negligible difference between both groups BMIs.
But..

There was a difference between both groups biological age:

Diagnosed with T2D

Ave. Chronological age, T2D (Y) = 40.15
Ave. Biological age, T2D (Y) = 44.30
Age acceleration = + 4.15 years

No diagnosed with T2D

Ave. Chronological age, T2D (N) = 39.07
Ave. Biological age, T2D (N) = 40.30
Age acceleration = + 1.23 years

This indicates that those diagnosed with T2D have an accelerated average biological age above that of their chronological age of + 4.15 years, and an increase in age above those without a T2D diagnosis of 2.92 years even considering that the average BMI values between the two groups are largely the same.