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Peer-reviewedCC BY-NC-ND 4.0Nature Communications

An epigenetic aging-informed dietary pattern is associated with a spectrum of aging-related health outcomes

  • Sirui Lai1
  • Jie Yu1
  • Li Zhang1
  • Min Wu1
  • Guoping Peng1
  • Geng Zong2
  • Hao Ma3
  • Changzheng Yuan4,5
  • Benyan Luo1,6
  • Hui Chen1
6 affiliations
  1. 1Department of Neurology, First Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China
  2. 2Institute of Nutrition, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
  3. 3Shanghai Institute of Nutrition and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, China
  4. 4School of Public Health, Second Affiliated Hospital, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China
  5. 5Department of Nutrition, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA USA
  6. 6MOE Frontier Science Center for Brain Science & Brain-machine Integration, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
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Abstract

Diet is associated with biological aging, yet few existing dietary indices have been developed specifically to target biological aging. We develop a data-driven, food-based Empirical Dietary Index for Slower Epigenetic Aging (EDISEA) to identify dietary features predictive of lower GrimAge2 acceleration. Higher EDISEA is associated with 4.17 years slower epigenetic aging in the derivation sample of 1,711 participants (P-value < 0.001) and 3.77 years slower aging in an independent sample of 2,311 participants. Higher EDISEA is consistently associated with lower all-cause mortality (pooled hazard ratio = 0.80, 95% CI 0.76, 0.85) in two US cohorts, and with lower risks of aging-related diseases, functional limitations, and multimorbidity across US and UK aging cohorts. Outcome-wide analyses in a large UK population-based cohort further show broad health associations, supported by molecular and neuroimaging signatures of more favourable vascular, inflammatory, metabolic, and brain structural profiles. EDISEA may provide an epigenetic aging-informed framework for studying dietary strategies relevant to healthy aging.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{lai2026epigenetic,
  title = {{An epigenetic aging-informed dietary pattern is associated with a spectrum of aging-related health outcomes}},
  author = {Sirui Lai and Jie Yu and Li Zhang and Min Wu and Guoping Peng and Geng Zong and Hao Ma and Changzheng Yuan and Benyan Luo and Hui Chen},
  journal = {Nature Communications},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.1038/s41467-026-77790-9},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-77790-9},
  note = {CC BY-NC-ND 4.0},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - An epigenetic aging-informed dietary pattern is associated with a spectrum of aging-related health outcomes
AU  - Sirui Lai
AU  - Jie Yu
AU  - Li Zhang
AU  - Min Wu
AU  - Guoping Peng
AU  - Geng Zong
AU  - Hao Ma
AU  - Changzheng Yuan
AU  - Benyan Luo
AU  - Hui Chen
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/25
JO  - Nature Communications
DO  - 10.1038/s41467-026-77790-9
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-77790-9
AB  - Diet is associated with biological aging, yet few existing dietary indices have been developed specifically to target biological aging. We develop a data-driven, food-based Empirical Dietary Index for Slower Epigenetic Aging (EDISEA) to identify dietary features predictive of lower GrimAge2 acceleration. Higher EDISEA is associated with 4.17 years slower epigenetic aging in the derivation sample of 1,711 participants (P-value < 0.001) and 3.77 years slower aging in an independent sample of 2,311 participants. Higher EDISEA is consistently associated with lower all-cause mortality (pooled hazard ratio = 0.80, 95% CI 0.76, 0.85) in two US cohorts, and with lower risks of aging-related diseases, functional limitations, and multimorbidity across US and UK aging cohorts. Outcome-wide analyses in a large UK population-based cohort further show broad health associations, supported by molecular and neuroimaging signatures of more favourable vascular, inflammatory, metabolic, and brain structural profiles. EDISEA may provide an epigenetic aging-informed framework for studying dietary strategies relevant to healthy aging.
SN  - 2041-1723
ER  -