@article {261, title = {DNA methylation age is associated with an altered hemostatic profile in a multi-ethnic meta-analysis}, journal = {Blood}, year = {2018}, abstract = {

Elevated epigenetic age is associated with an altered hemostatic factor profile and lower clotting time (aPTT).DNA methylation age is associated with mRNA levels of fibrinogen in multiple tissues. Many hemostatic factors are associated with age and age-related diseases, however much remains unknown about the biological mechanisms linking aging and hemostatic factors. DNA methylation is a novel means by which to assess epigenetic aging, which is a measure of age and the aging processes as determined by altered epigenetic states. We used a meta-analysis approach to examine the association between measures of epigenetic aging and hemostatic factors, as well as a clotting time measure. For fibrinogen, we used European and African-ancestry participants who were meta-analyzed separately and combined via a random effects meta-analysis. All other measures only included participants of European-ancestry. We found that 1-year higher extrinsic epigenetic age as compared to chronological age was associated with higher fibrinogen (0.004 g/L per year; 95\% CI: 0.001, 0.007; P = 0.01) and plasminogen activator inhibitor 1 (PAI-1; 0.13 U/mL per year; 95\% CI: 0.07, 0.20; P = 6.6x10-5) concentrations as well as lower activated partial thromboplastin time, a measure of clotting time. We replicated PAI-1 associations using an independent cohort. To further elucidate potential functional mechanisms we associated epigenetic aging with expression levels of the PAI-1 protein encoding gene (SERPINE1) and the three fibrinogen subunit-encoding genes (FGA, FGG, and FGB), in both peripheral blood and aorta intima-media samples. We observed associations between accelerated epigenetic aging and transcription of FGG in both tissues. Collectively, our results indicate that accelerated epigenetic aging is associated with a pro-coagulation hemostatic profile, and that epigenetic aging may regulate hemostasis in part via gene transcription.

}, issn = {0006-4971}, doi = {10.1182/blood-2018-02-831347}, url = {http://www.bloodjournal.org/content/early/2018/07/24/blood-2018-02-831347}, author = {Ward-Caviness, Cavin K. and Huffman, Jennifer E. and Evertt, Karl and Germain, Marine and van Dongen, Jenny and Hill, W. David and Jhun, Min A. and Brody, Jennifer A. and Ghanbari, Mohsen and Du, Lei and Roetker, Nicholas S. and de Vries, Paul S. and Waldenberger, Melanie and Gieger, Christian and Wolf, Petra and Prokisch, Holger and Koenig, Wolfgang and O{\textquoteright}Donnell, Christopher J. and Levy, Daniel and Liu, Chunyu and Truong, Vinh and Wells, Philip S. and Tr{\'e}gou{\"e}t, David-Alexandre and Tang, Weihong and Morrison, Alanna C. and Boerwinkle, Eric and Wiggins, Kerri L. and McKnight, Barbara and Guo, Xiuqing and Psaty, Bruce M. and Sotoodenia, Nona and Dorret I. Boomsma and Gonneke Willemsen and Lannie Ligthart and Deary, Ian J. and Zhao, Wei and Ware, Erin B. and Kardia, Sharon L.R. and Joyce B.J. Van Meurs and Uitterlinden, Andre G. and Franco, Oscar H. and Eriksson, Per and Franco-Cereceda, Anders and Pankow, James S. and Johnson, Andrew D. and Gagnon, France and Morange, Pierre-Emmanuel and de Geus, Eco J.C. and Starr, John M. and Smith, Jennifer A. and Dehghan, Abbas and Bj{\"o}rck, Hanna M. and Smith, Nicholas L. and Peters, Annette} } @article {227, title = {DNA methylation signatures of educational attainment}, volume = {3}, year = {2018}, month = {2018/03/23}, pages = {7}, abstract = {

Educational attainment is a key behavioural measure in studies of cognitive and physical health, and socioeconomic status. We measured DNA methylation at 410,746 CpGs (N\ =\ 4152) and identified 58 CpGs associated with educational attainment at loci characterized by pleiotropic functions shared with neuronal, immune and developmental processes. Associations overlapped with those for smoking behaviour, but remained after accounting for smoking at many CpGs: Effect sizes were on average 28\% smaller and genome-wide significant at 11 CpGs after adjusting for smoking and were 62\% smaller in never smokers. We examined sources and biological implications of education-related methylation differences, demonstrating correlations with maternal prenatal folate, smoking and air pollution signatures, and associations with gene expression in cis, dynamic methylation in foetal brain, and correlations between blood and brain. Our findings show that the methylome of lower-educated people resembles that of smokers beyond effects of their own smoking behaviour and shows traces of various other exposures.

}, isbn = {2056-7936}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41539-018-0020-2}, author = {Jenny van Dongen and Bonder, Marc Jan and Dekkers, Koen F. and Michel G. Nivard and van Iterson, Maarten and Gonneke Willemsen and Beekman, Marian and van der Spek, Ashley and Joyce B.J. Van Meurs and Franke, Lude and Bastiaan T. Heijmans and van Duijn, Cornelia M. and Slagboom, P. Eline and Dorret I. Boomsma} } @article {128, title = {Genetic and environmental influences interact with age and sex in shaping the human methylome}, journal = {Nat Commun}, volume = {7}, year = {2016}, month = {2016/04/07}, abstract = {

The methylome is subject to genetic and environmental effects. Their impact may depend on sex and age, resulting in sex- and age-related physiological variation and disease susceptibility. Here we estimate the total heritability of DNA methylation levels in whole blood and estimate the variance explained by common single nucleotide polymorphisms at 411,169 sites in 2,603 individuals from twin families, to establish a catalogue of between-individual variation in DNA methylation. Heritability estimates vary across the genome (mean=19\%) and interaction analyses reveal thousands of sites with sex-specific heritability as well as sites where the environmental variance increases with age. Integration with previously published data illustrates the impact of genome and environment across the lifespan at methylation sites associated with metabolic traits, smoking and ageing. These findings demonstrate that our catalogue holds valuable information on locations in the genome where methylation variation between people may reflect disease-relevant environmental exposures or genetic variation.

}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms11115}, author = {Jenny van Dongen and Michel G. Nivard and Gonneke Willemsen and Hottenga, Jouke-Jan and Helmer, Quinta and Conor V Dolan and Ehli, Erik A. and Gareth E Davies and van Iterson, Maarten and Breeze, Charles E. and Beck, Stephan and BIOS Consortium and Suchiman, H. Eka and Jansen, Rick and Joyce B.J. Van Meurs and Bastiaan T. Heijmans and Slagboom, P. Eline and Dorret I. Boomsma} }