Alzheimer's disease (AD) represents a devastating progressive neurodegenerative disease with a complex pathophysiology, affecting millions of people worldwide. Recent epigenome-wide association studies suggest a key role for epigenetic mechanisms in its development and course. Despite the fact that current evidence on the role of epigenetic dysregulation in aging and AD is convincing, the pioneering field of neuroepigenetics is still facing many challenges that need to be addressed to fundamentally increase our understanding about the underlying mechanisms of this neurodegenerative disorder. This perspective paper describes the current state of play for epigenetic research into AD and discusses how new methodological advances in the field of epigenetics and related data science disciplines could further spur the development of novel therapeutic agents and biomarker assays.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/bpa.12880 | DOI Listing |
Gene
January 2025
Department of Maternal and Child Health School of Public Health Tongji Medical College Huazhong University of Science and Technology Wuhan China; Key Laboratory of Environment and Health, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Environmental Protection, State Key Laboratory of Environmental Health (Incubating), School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 13 Hangkong Road, Wuhan, Hubei 430030, China. Electronic address:
Background: Existing epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) investigating the association between DNA methylation (DNAm) and child neurodevelopment have been predominantly conducted within Western populations, and yielded inconsistent results, leading to a significant gap within non-Western setting, particularly in resource-limited rural areas of Central China.
Objectives: To investigate the association between altered epigenome-wide DNAm and neurodevelopment in preschool children from resource-limited rural areas of Central China.
Methods: This case-control study involved 64 preschoolers.
Despite considerable advances in identifying risk factors for obesity development, there remains substantial gaps in our knowledge about its etiology. Variation in obesity (defined by BMI) is thought to be due in part to heritable factors; however, obesity-associated genetic variants only account for a small portion of heritability. Epigenetic regulation, defined by genetic and/or environmental factors with changes in gene expression, may account for some of this "missing heritability".
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClin Epigenetics
January 2025
Centre for Genomic and Experimental Medicine, Institute of Genetics and Cancer, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.
Alcohol consumption is an important risk factor for multiple diseases. It is typically assessed via self-report, which is open to measurement error through recall bias. Instead, molecular data such as blood-based DNA methylation (DNAm) could be used to derive a more objective measure of alcohol consumption by incorporating information from cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) sites known to be linked to the trait.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnviron Pollut
January 2025
Department of Pediatrics, University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR; Arkansas Children's Nutrition Center, Little Rock, AR.
The placenta is crucial for fetal development, is affected by PFAS toxicity, and evidence is accumulating that gestational PFAS perturb the epigenetic activity of the placenta. Gestational PFAS exposure can adversely affect offspring, yet individual and cumulative impacts of PFAS on the placental epigenome remain underexplored. Here, we conducted an epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) to examine the relationships between placental PFAS levels and DNA methylation in a cohort of mother-infant dyads in Arkansas (N=151).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Thromb Haemost
January 2025
Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada; Office of the Vice-Principal of Research and Innovation, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Canada. Electronic address:
Background: Whether to stop oral anticoagulants after a first unprovoked venous thromboembolism (VTE) is challenging, partially due to an intriguingly higher risk of VTE recurrence (rVTE) in men after therapy discontinuation. DNA methylation (DNAm) differences between men and women might underly this sex-biased rVTE risk difference.
Aim: To investigate sex-specific associations between DNAm at cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) sites and rVTE.
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