From technologynetworks.com
By Katie Brighton
A month-long vegan diet altered epigenetic patterns associated with aging, cancer, metabolism, and inflammation
People often tout a vegan diet for its health benefits, and research is now shedding light on how avoiding animal products may produce positive biological effects.
A new study has found that switching to a vegan diet for just one month can reshape epigenetic patterns associated with inflammation, cell growth, and metabolism, while also slowing biological aging.
Understanding how diet affects our epigenome
The diet we follow has a large impact on our health. Dietary strategies are considered one potential intervention for slowing the rate of the molecular changes associated with aging.
Veganism has been rising in popularity over recent years, with vegan diets being associated with anti-inflammatory effects, improved glycaemic control, and a lower risk of cardiometabolic disease.
However, the molecular pathways that link a vegan diet to its health benefits are not well understood.
Environmental factors, like nutrition, can alter the epigenome, which in turn regulates gene expression. As such, epigenetic regulation, including DNA methylation, acts as a molecular bridge between diet and cellular states.
The epigenome
The epigenome refers to the chemical modifications that are layered on top of the genome that determine which genes are expressed without changing the underlying DNA sequence.
To explore how a vegan diet influences health, researchers from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) conducted a randomized clinical trial in which participants followed a standardized diet for one week, then consumed either a vegan or a meat-rich diet for four weeks.
As weight loss is commonly associated with vegan diets, participants were instructed to maintain their total caloric intake to enable the researchers to isolate the effects of diet composition.
Genome-wide DNA methylation patterns from the participants were analysed before and after the dietary intervention, with 800,000 methylation sites examined.
DNA methylation
Methylation marks on DNA change the spatial conformation of DNA, compacting it to prevent transcription factor binding at promoter regions and therefore suppressing gene expression.
The researchers found that after the intervention, 97 sites showed methylation differences between participants on a vegan diet and those on a meat-rich diet. While this suggests that diet has a measurable impact on DNA methylation, the authors noted that substantial epigenetic differences between individuals make it difficult to definitively attribute these changes exclusively to diet.
They therefore focused on how DNA methylation changed between baseline and trial completion in each group, particularly at methylation sites associated with gene promoter regions.
The change in diet altered these methylation sites in both diet groups, but the number of sites that lost methylation was higher in the meat-eating group, indicating diet-induced gene activation.
“Our genes are not our destiny,” said Dr. Jerome Mertens, associate professor of neurosciences at UCSD School of Medicine and co-senior author of the study. “The remarkable finding isn’t simply that one diet outperformed another. It’s that the epigenome responded measurably in just four weeks, showing that our biology is far more dynamic—and responsive to everyday choices—than we often assume.”
Participants on the vegan diet exhibited greater methylation (gene silencing) at promoter regions associated with cancer, cell stress, and muscle cell proliferation pathways. Genes with anticancer properties were also found to be epigenetically activated in people who had consumed a vegan diet.
The researchers pinpointed specific signalling pathways that were affected by diet, including Hippo and the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), which were repressed in those on vegan diet, and AMPK and insulin signalling, which were activated in the vegan diet cohort.
Signalling pathways
Hippo: The Hippo pathway influences cell proliferation and differentiation, tissue regeneration, organ growth and embryogenesis. Dysregulation of the Hippo pathway can contribute to cancer, cardiac diseases, and immune dysfunction.
mTOR: mTOR signalling is a central regulator of cell metabolism, growth, proliferation, and survival. It is commonly dysregulated in cancer.
AMPK: Signalling via the AMPK pathway plays critical roles in regulating growth and metabolism. AMPK can be dysregulated in many chronic diseases, including diabetes, obesity, and cancer.
Insulin: Insulin signalling activates a complex network of further signalling cascades, which affect multiple physiological process, including glucose uptake and synthesis, gene expression, protein and DNA synthesis, and apoptosis.
These findings illustrate potential mechanisms underlying the health effects of vegan diets, which is supported by prior research that indicates that plant-based diets are associated with reduced cancer risk.
A vegan diet alters biological aging
Epigenetic aging clocks are algorithms that use DNA methylation data to estimate a "biological age" of cells. These clocks compare biological age and chronological age to provide a measure of health.
Two clocks designed to estimate age-related health outcomes, PhenoAge and GrimAge, revealed that a vegan diet appeared to slow the pace of biological aging, estimating differences between biological and chronological age of 1.7 years and 0.53 years, respectively.
It is worth noting that the small cohort size of 48 participants prevented statistically significant between-group comparisons of PhenoAge and GrimAge acceleration.
However, analysis with the Blood&Skin clock, which was optimized to predict chronological age, indicated that the vegan diet intervention may have accelerated aging.
“These findings reinforce the idea that not all measures of biological aging capture the same biology,” said Mertens. “The clocks associated with disease risk and overall health consistently pointed in the same direction, suggesting the dietary changes were influencing pathways tied to health rather than simply the passage of time.”
Diet also changed the distribution of immune cells
Changes in immune cell distribution can indicate physiological changes relevant to inflammation and aging, so the authors used the epigenetic data to study how the immune system changed in response to diet.
DNA methylation is cell-type-specific, so epigenetic data from blood samples can be used to infer the proportions of different immune cells present.
The researchers found that the vegan diet appeared to shift the immune system towards a less inflammatory state. Levels of CD4+ T cells, which regulate immune responses, were significantly higher in people who ate a vegan diet, and levels of pro-inflammatory neutrophils were lower compared to the meat-eating group.
"Inflammaging" refers to the hypothesis that chronic inflammation accelerates biological aging. The finding that vegan diets might reduce inflammation by increasing CD4+ T cell levels suggests that dietary interventions could slow this process and potentially delay age-related diseases.
The authors stress that as the study had a small sample size and short duration, larger participant cohorts and longer dietary intervention periods are needed to fully understand the impact of the observed epigenetic changes and the influence of diet on biological aging and health.
“Our study adds to growing evidence that nutrition can shape biology at the molecular level,” said Dr. Max Storz, a clinician and researcher from the University of Freiburg Medical Center and co-senior author of the study.
“The next step is to understand whether these epigenetic changes persist over time and whether they translate into meaningful improvements in long-term health. That will require larger clinical studies, but these findings provide an important foundation.”
Reference: Karbacher L, Mertens J, Kowarschik S, et al. A vegan diet epigenetically modulates inflammatory pathways and biological aging: Genome-wide DNA methylation analysis of a one-month isocaloric vegan versus meat-rich dietary intervention. MedComm. 2026;7(8):e70899. doi: 10.1002/mco2.70899
Original story: University of California San Diego
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