Assessing Metabolic Ageing via DNA Methylation Surrogate Markers: A Multicohort Study in Britain, Ireland and the USA.

Metabolomics and epigenomics have been used to develop 'ageing clocks' that assess biological age and identify 'accelerated ageing'. While metabolites are subject to short-term variation, DNA methylation (DNAm) may capture longer-term metabolic changes. We aimed to develop a hybrid DNAm-metabolic clock using DNAm as metabolite surrogates ('DNAm-metabolites') for age prediction.

A meta-analysis of epigenome-wide association studies of ultra-processed food consumption with DNA methylation in European children.

Background/objective: There is limited knowledge on how diet affects the epigenome of children. Ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption is emerging as an important factor impacting health, but mechanisms need to be uncovered. We therefore aimed to assess the association between UPF consumption and DNA methylation in children.

Test-Retest Reliability of Two Computationally-Characterised Affective Bias Tasks.

Affective biases are commonly seen in disorders such as depression and anxiety, where individuals may show attention towards and preferential processing of negative or threatening stimuli. Affective biases have been shown to change with effective intervention: randomized controlled trials into these biases and the mechanisms that underpin them may allow greater understanding of how interventions can be improved and their success be maximized. For such trials to be informative, we must have reliable ways of measuring affective bias over time, so we can detect how and whether they are altered by interventions: the test-retest reliability of our measures puts an upper bound on our ability to detect any changes.

Childhood exposure to non-persistent endocrine disruptors, glucocorticosteroids, and attentional function: A cross-sectional study based on the parametric g-formula.

Background: Evidence suggests that endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) may perturb the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis, which has a major role in brain development. We aimed to evaluate the effects of childhood exposure to organophosphate pesticides, phenols, and phthalate metabolites, on urinary glucocorticosteroids and inattention in childhood.

Methods: We used data from the Human Early-Life Exposome (HELIX) cohort (2013-2016) and the parametric g-formula to estimate associations between EDCs, glucocorticosteroids, and hit reaction time standard error (HRT-SE), a measure of inattention, and tested for possible effect modification by sex.

Amygdala activity after subchronic escitalopram administration in healthy volunteers: A pharmaco-functional magnetic resonance imaging study.

Background: Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) are used for the treatment of several conditions including anxiety disorders, but the basic neurobiology of serotonin function remains unclear. The amygdala and prefrontal cortex are strongly innervated by serotonergic projections and have been suggested to play an important role in anxiety expression. However, serotonergic function in behaviour and SSRI-mediated neurobiological changes remain incompletely understood.