A pilot prospective study of sleep patterns and DNA methylation-characterized epigenetic aging in young adults

Objective Molecular markers in DNA methylation at a subset of CpG sites are affected by the environment and contribute to biological (epigenetic) age. We hypothesized that shorter sleep duration and possibly irregular sleep would be associated with accelerated epigenetic aging. We examined epigenetic vs. chronological age in 12 young women selected as shorter or longer sleepers studied prospectively across the first 9 weeks of college using a daily online sleep log. Genomic DNA was isolated from two blood samples spanning the interval, and DNA methylation levels were determined and used to measure epigenetic age.