On June 30, 2022, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles published a study in the Cell journal iScience titled: Accelerated aging with HIV begins at the time of initial HIV infection.
The study suggests that HIV accelerates age-related biological changes in the body in just 2-3 years after infection. People infected with HIV have a life expectancy nearly five years shorter than those uninfected.
The team said HIV initiates the process of accelerated aging at the DNA level in the early days after infection. This finding highlights the importance of early diagnosis of HIV and understanding of aging-related issues, as well as the importance and value of preventing HIV infection.
Previous studies have linked HIV and antiretroviral therapy, commonly used to control infection, to the early onset of age-related diseases, such as heart disease, kidney disease, frailty and cognitive impairment.
The team analysed blood samples collected and stored from 100 men six months or less before they were infected with HIV and again two to three years after infection. The blood samples were then compared with those from 100 uninfected men of the same age at the same time. All were participants in a multicenter COHORT of AIDS studies, a national study that ran from 1984 to 2019. It is also the first study to compare HIV-infected and uninfected people in this way.
The research team focused on how HIV affects epigenetic DNA methylation, a modification that cells use to turn genes on and off during normal physiological changes. Epigenetic changes are changes that occur in response to the influence of the environment, behavior, or other external factors, such as disease. These changes do not affect the DNA sequence, but can affect how genes are expressed through DNA methylation.
The team assessed the participants for five epigenetic changes, four of which were so-called epigenetic clocks, each using a slightly different approach to assessing biological age relative to actual age, where DNA methylation levels increase with age. The fifth assessment is based on telomere length. The length of telomeres gradually decreases with age.
The results showed that all hiv-infected individuals showed accelerated aging on all four epigenetic clocks between pre-infection and two to three years post-infection, with an accelerated average biological age of 1.9 to 4.8 years and shortened telomeres. Participants who were not infected with HIV did not see a similar acceleration in biological age over the same time interval.
The next goal, the team says, is to determine whether these traits can predict whether a person is at risk for age-related diseases, thus providing new directions for intervention and treatment.