Overview
- The findings, published Monday, report a randomized, isocaloric trial in 48 healthy adults who followed a standard diet for one week and then a vegan or meat-rich diet for one month.
- Researchers measured more than 800,000 DNA methylation sites and found modest but widespread methylation changes in the vegan group across pathways tied to immune function, metabolism, cell growth and DNA repair.
- Methylation-based predictions of immune-cell proportions showed lower neutrophils and higher CD4 T cells for the vegan group, and those predictions matched actual blood cell counts collected in the trial.
- Two epigenetic clocks linked to disease risk indicated a short-term slowing of biological aging in the vegan group while a clock optimized for chronological age did not show the same pattern.
- Authors emphasize the study’s small size and one-month duration and say the results are mechanistic and preliminary, so larger and longer trials are needed to test whether the molecular signals persist and reduce disease risk.