Can Vitamin D supplementation prevent aging?

In patients with vitamin D insufficiency, supplementation with vitamin D is related with reduced DNAm age acceleration (DNAmAA), says an article published in the Journal of Geroscience.

The negative consequences of low vitamin D levels on mortality and morbidity are hotly debated. In particular, elderly are at risk of vitamin D deficiency and hence vulnerable to its potentially hazardous repercussions. DNA methylation age (DNAm age) and its divergence from chronological age, DNAm age acceleration, are two methods for detecting biological age differences (DNAmAA). Valentin Max Vetter and colleagues expected that treating vitamin D insufficiency would be related with slower epigenetic aging, and that treated participants would not vary from untreated persons.

A quasi-interventional research design was used in this investigation to examine the link with DNAmAA of five epigenetic clocks and vitamin D administration. Longitudinal data were provided for 1,036 BASE-II individuals who were reexamined 7.4 years later in the GendAge trial. The 7-CpG clock, Horvath's clock, PhenoAge, Hannum's clock, and GrimAge were used to calculate DNAmAA. Methylation information was gathered using methylation-sensitive single nucleotide primer extension (MS-SNuPE) or Illumina's Infinium "Methylation EPIC" array.

The key findings of this study were as follow:

1. When compared to untreated and vitamin D-deficient people, vitamin D-deficient patients who started vitamin D supplementation after baseline evaluation had a 2.6-year lower 7-CpG DNAmAA and a 1.3-year lower Horvath DNAmAA.

2. DNAmAA levels did not differ significantly between persons with well treated vitamin D insufficiency and healthy controls.

The Authors concluded based on the findings of this study that adequate vitamin D treatment in vitamin D-deficient elderly appears to be helpful in terms of epigenetic aging, at least when assessed with the 7-CpG or Horvath's clock. No further change in DNAmAA was identified between treated individuals and the control group of persons who are vitamin D adequate without supplementation. RCTs of sufficient size are required to study this potentially causative impact further.

Reference: 

Vetter, V. M., Sommerer, Y., Kalies, C. H., Spira, D., Bertram, L., & Demuth, I. (2022). Vitamin D supplementation is associated with slower epigenetic aging. In GeroScience (Vol. 44, Issue 3, pp. 1847–1859). Springer Science and Business Media LLC. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11357-022-00581-9