Overview
- King’s College London researchers report that higher blood levels of theobromine were associated with younger epigenetic age estimates in 1,669 adults from the TwinsUK and German KORA cohorts.
- Theobromine was the only cocoa- or coffee-derived metabolite measured that showed this association, according to the paper published December 10 in the journal Aging.
- Biological age was gauged using DNA methylation clocks, including GrimAge, with a weaker parallel signal observed for telomere length.
- Authors and independent experts stress the findings are observational, single timepoint and limited to European participants, so they do not justify increasing chocolate intake.
- The team is planning follow-up work to test causality and to determine whether theobromine acts alone or interacts with other cocoa components such as polyphenols.