Associations of depression and anxiety symptoms in childhood and adolescence with epigenetic aging.

Background: Childhood anxiety and depression symptoms are potential risk factors for accelerated biological aging. In child and adolescent twins, we tested whether these symptoms were associated with DNA methylation (DNAm) aging, a measure of biological aging.

Methods: 276 twins (135 pairs, 6 singletons) had DNAm assayed from saliva in middle childhood (mean = 7.