Methylome-wide analysis of chronic HIV infected patients and healthy controls. Homo sapiens

Current therapy has turned HIV infection into a chronic condition. Clinically, some patients suffer prematurely from ailments associated with advanced age; however, the relationship between HIV and aging is unclear. Here we have collected a large cohort of HAART treated HIV+ subjects with both recent and chronic infection and recapitulated the shared phenotype of HIV and age. To further understand this signal, we applied validated models of DNA methylation-based biological age to establish a clear link between HIV infection and molecular age advancement. We then show this result to be robust to HIV duration, cellular composition, and general methylome disorder. Finally we show a pattern of hypomethylation in HIV+ individuals at the HLA locus. Together these results lead to a much-needed better understanding of the epigenetic consequences and gerontological aspects of chronic HIV infection. Overall design: To determine whether HIV is associated with signs of aberrant biological aging, samples of whole blood were collected from HIV-infected, HAART-treated but otherwise healthy non-Hispanic white males (no hepatitis C co-infection, no diabetes, and strict adherence to therapy) and healthy non-Hispanic white male controls. DNA was extracted from whole blood and genome-wide methylation profiles of each sample were determined using the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip array. As a validation, a second cohort of subjects was profiled by flow-sorting cells and measuring methylation in pure-cell populations. Data were normalized and controlled for quality using standard techniques. Please note that the following samples were excluded from the data processing by quality control steps; METI-6 METI-7 352_CD4 381_CD4 however, their raw data was provided so that the full pipeline could be reproduced.