DNA methylation signatures of monozygotic twins clinically discordant for multiple sclerosis

Nicole Y. Souren (), Lisa A. Gerdes, Pavlo Lutsik, Gilles Gasparoni, Eduardo Beltrán, Abdulrahman Salhab, Tania Kümpfel, Dieter Weichenhan, Christoph Plass, Reinhard Hohlfeld and Jörn Walter ()
Additional contact information
Nicole Y. Souren: Saarland University
Lisa A. Gerdes: Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich
Pavlo Lutsik: German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
Gilles Gasparoni: Saarland University
Eduardo Beltrán: Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich
Abdulrahman Salhab: Saarland University
Tania Kümpfel: Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich
Dieter Weichenhan: German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
Christoph Plass: German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ)
Reinhard Hohlfeld: Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich
Jörn Walter: Saarland University

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-12

Abstract: Abstract Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory, demyelinating disease of the central nervous system with a modest concordance rate in monozygotic twins, which strongly argues for involvement of epigenetic factors. We observe highly similar peripheral blood mononuclear cell-based methylomes in 45 MS-discordant monozygotic twins. Nevertheless, we identify seven MS-associated differentially methylated positions (DMPs) of which we validate two, including a region in the TMEM232 promoter and ZBTB16 enhancer. In CD4 + T cells we find an MS-associated differentially methylated region in FIRRE. Additionally, 45 regions show large methylation differences in individual pairs, but they do not clearly associate with MS. Furthermore, we present epigenetic biomarkers for current interferon-beta treatment, and extensive validation shows that the ZBTB16 DMP is a signature for prior glucocorticoid treatment. Taken together, this study represents an important reference for epigenomic MS studies, identifies new candidate epigenetic markers, and highlights treatment effects and genetic background as major confounders.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09984-3 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-09984-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09984-3

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().