Epigenetic age acceleration is not strongly associated with cardiorespiratory fitness in heart failure: a pilot study

However, chronological age showed similar associations, and biological age did not significantly improve prediction of VO₂ parameters beyond chronological age alone. EAA was not significantly associated with cardiorespiratory fitness for any clock.</p> <p>In this pilot study, neither biological age nor EAA provided significant predictive value beyond chronological age for cardiorespiratory fitness in patients with HF.</p> <p>NCT03797001</p> <p>Heart failure is a serious condition in which heart is not able to pump blood completely.

Currently, doctors use heart imaging and exercise tests to evaluate the severity of the disease, but these measures do not always explain why people with heart failure demonstrate different symptoms or health outcomes. Researchers have developed a blood test that looks at chemical changes on a person’s DNA, which build up with age, to estimate a person’s “biological age” meaning how old their body seems on the inside, which can be different from their actual age in years.</p> <p>In this study, we tested blood samples from fourteen patients with heart failure to see whether their biological age, or how much faster they were aging than expected, was linked to their fitness level, measured by how much oxygen their body could use during exercise.</p> <p>We found that biological age was linked to fitness, but a person’s actual age predicted fitness just as well.

Aging faster than expected did not clearly predict fitness in this small group. This led us to conclude that aging faster than expected does not have a large effect on fitness in patients with heart failure, but we cannot rule out smaller effects.</p>