Comprehensive analysis identifying aberrant DNA methylation in rectal mucosa from ulcerative colitis patients with neoplasia.

Background: There are no biomarkers to facilitate the identification of patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) who are at high risk for developing colorectal cancer (CRC). In our current study, we used rectal tissues from UC patients to identify aberrant DNA methylations and evaluated whether they could be used to identify UC patients with coexisting colorectal neoplasia.

Results: Using a training set, we identified 484 differentially methylated regions (DMRs) with absolute delta beta-values > 0.