The aim of the study was to evaluate the effectiveness of changes in epigenetic age as a cancer prevention strategy.
The findings found limited evidence that accelerated epigenetic age is causally linked to breast, lung, ovarian or prostate cancer.
But results were more striking for bowel cancer, where they showed a 12 percent increased risk of the disease with every additional year of biological age.
Rebecca Richmond, Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow in Molecular Epidemiology at the MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit, University of Bristol, said: “Our work provides potentially relevant findings for public health.