Drugs and supplements that may slow aging of the epigenome

With age and age-related disease, genes are more often aberrantly silenced than aberrantly activated. This silencing usually involves epigenetics including DNA hypermethylation and histone hypoacetylation. Histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACIs) show promise to prevent and treat silencing because their side effects are moderate and some occur in foods such as broccoli and garlic. Drugs such as metformin or statins may make more acetyl coenzyme A (acetyl-CoA) available for histone acetylation and thus complement the actions of HDACIs. Combinations of HDACIs with drugs that increase acetyl-CoA may effectively prevent or reverse aberrant gene silencing.