Epigenetic Age Associates with Psychosocial Stress and Resilience in Children of Latinx Immigrants

Abstract

Aim: To investigate associations of psychosocial stressors and resilience factors with DNA methylation age in the saliva of Latinx children of immigrants before and after the 2016 presidential election (2015–2018). Materials & methods: We compared psychosocial exposures with four distinct measures of epigenetic age assessed in the saliva of children (6–13 years, n = 71 pre-election; n = 35 post-election). Exploratory genome-wide analyses were also conducted. Results: We found distinct associations across epigenetic clocks and time points; for example, greater maternal social status pre-election and fear of parent deportation post-election both associated with decreased Hannum age (p ≤ 0.01). Conclusion: Although limited in size, our unique study design provides novel hypotheses regarding how the social environment may influence epigenetic aging and genome-wide methylation, potentially contributing to racial/ethnic health inequalities.

Keywords::

• DNA methylation
• early-life adversity
• election effects
• epigenetic aging
• epigenome-wide association study
• immigrants
• Latinx
• pediatric
• psychosocial stress
• resilience

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge all the immigrant families who participated in our study. They specifically thank R Quiroz, E Aballi-Morrell, G Leon-Perez, D Sanchez and M Miller for assistance with Spanish-language data collection from mothers and B Hollister, S To, H Glass, E Zhu, N Smith, A Whittemore, K Sykes and other undergraduate students at Vanderbilt University and high school students for assisting with data collection from children. They also thank K Myers, D Cheung, A Royer, J Corona, C Arcasi-Matta, G Murano, E Eisner and L Sanchez for assistance in interview transcriptions or sample processing and N Valdez for helpful feedback on the manuscript.

Financial & competing interest disclosure

This study was funded by the Chancellors Research in Excellence Scholars at UCSD (application no. 4-G021), the Young Scholars Program Foundation for Child Development (VU-14) and the Hellman Award (UCSD). The funders played no role in the analysis of interpretation of data in this study. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Ethical conduct of research

The authors state that they have obtained appropriate institutional review board approval for all study procedures. Informed consent has been obtained from all participants involved.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by the Chancellors Research in Excellence Scholars at UCSD (application no. 4-G021), the Young Scholars Program Foundation for Child Development (VU-14) and the Hellman Award (UCSD). The funders played no role in the analysis of interpretation of data in this study. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed. No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.