HIV infection prematurely ages humans by an average of 5 years
"The medical issues in treating people with HIV have changed," says Howard Fox, a Professor in the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Neuroscience at the University of Nebraska Medical Center and one of the authors of the new study. "We're no longer as worried about infections that come from being immunocompromised. Now we worry about diseases related to aging, like cardiovascular disease, neurocognitive impairment, and liver problems." The tool used in the new study looks at epigenetic changes in people's cells. Epigenetic changes affect the DNA, but not the DNA sequence. Once they occur, they are passed down from one generation of cell to the next, influencing how genes are expressed. The particular epigenetic change used as a biomarker in this research was methylation , the process by which small chemical groups are attached to DNA. Methylation of DNA can impact how genes get translated into proteins. "What we've seen in previous ...