Overview
- Published December 10 in Aging, the King's College London analysis found higher blood theobromine levels tracked with younger epigenetic age in 1,669 adults from the TwinsUK and KORA cohorts.
- Theobromine was the only cocoa- or coffee-related metabolite measured that showed this specific association with epigenetic aging markers such as GrimAge.
- Links to telomere length pointed in the same direction but were weaker, suggesting different aging processes are being captured by the biomarkers.
- Authors and outside experts stress the cross-sectional, European-only design and note possible confounding from unmeasured compounds like flavan-3-ols or reverse causation.
- The team cautions against eating more chocolate given sugar and fat content and is pursuing mechanistic work and randomized or longitudinal studies to test causality.