Epigenetic age acceleration among survivors of pediatric medulloblastoma and primitive neuroectodermal tumor

Abstract

Survivors of childhood central nervous system (CNS) tumors experience early-onset aging-related phenotypes. DNA methylation (DNAm) age is an emerging epigenetic biomarker of physiologic age and may be predictive of chronic health conditions in long-term survivors. This report describes the course of epigenetic age acceleration using post-diagnosis blood samples (median: 3.9 years post-diagnosis; range: 0.04-15.96) from 83 survivors of pediatric CNS tumors. Epigenetic age acceleration was detected in 72% of patients, with an average difference between chronologic and DNAm age of 2.58 years (95% CI: 1.75-3.41, p < 0.001). Time from diagnosis to sample collection correlated with the magnitude of epigenetic age acceleration.

Keywords:

• Epigenetics
• aging
• survivorship
• PNET
• medulloblastoma

Conflict of interest statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by funding from the National Institutes of Health National Cancer Institute (K07CA218362), the Cancer Prevention & Research Institute of Texas (RP170668), and the Pablove Foundation Childhood Cancer Research Seed Grant.