Collaborating with colleagues from UBC and UCLA, BC-CfE researchers, in a novel study, looked at whether people living with HIV (PLWH) and (COPD) experience an acceleration of aging in their airways, independent of their smoking history.
The study, titled “Airway Aging and Methylation Disruptions in HIV-associated Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease“ was recently published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
The objective of this study was to identify whether accelerated aging can be observed in the airways of PLWH with COPD. In order to identify accelerated aging, the researchers sought a unique DNA methylation signature, one which would suggest a unique aging pathophysiology in the HIV airway epithelium.
The researchers sampled airway epithelial cells from patients living with both HIV and COPD. Epithelium is a type of body tissue which forms the covering on all internal and external surfaces of our bodies. In the samples, researchers found major alterations in the methylation pattern of airway epithelial cells consistent with accelerated aging, which differed from the pattern observed in HIV-negative individuals with COPD.
An important control group in this study included PLWH who were never-smokers. In comparison with HIV-negative never-smokers, PLWH displayed accelerated aging even in the absence of cigarette smoking. Another factor which makes these findings even more striking is that the control participants were chronologically older than the PLWH groups.
Even with antiretroviral therapy, people living with HIV appear to age faster than HIV-uninfected people. This work shows that the lung is not spared in this accelerated aging process and could lead many people living with HIV to have chronic shortness of breath and cough.
– Dr. Janice Leung, Assistant Professor at UBC’s Faculty of Medicine and a respirologist at St. Paul’s Hospital
This study represents the first detection of an accelerated methylation aging signal in the HIV airway epithelium. The authors say this signal is accentuated by the dual presence of HIV and COPD, and conclude their study by calling for a tailored approach to COPD treatment in PLWH based on further study of these patterns.