title: Obesity related methylation changes in DNA of peripheral blood leukocytes.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Despite evidence linking obesity to impaired immune function, little is known about the specific mechanisms. Because of emerging evidence that immune responses are epigenetically regulated, we hypothesized that DNA methylation changes are involved in obesity induced immune dysfunction and aimed to identify these changes.
  
  
  METHODS
  We conducted a genome wide methylation analysis on seven obese cases and seven lean controls aged 14 to 18 years from extreme ends of the obesity distribution and performed further validation of six CpG sites from six genes in 46 obese cases and 46 lean controls aged 14 to 30 years.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In comparison with the lean controls, we observed one CpG site in the UBASH3A gene showing higher methylation levels and one CpG site in the TRIM3 gene showing lower methylation levels in the obese cases in both the genome wide step (P = 5 × 10(-6) and P = 2 × 10(-5) for the UBASH3A and the TRIM3 gene respectively) and the validation step (P = 0.008 and P = 0.001 for the UBASH3A and the TRIM3 gene respectively).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Our results provide evidence that obesity is associated with methylation changes in blood leukocyte DNA. Further studies are warranted to determine the causal direction of this relationship as well as whether such methylation changes can lead to immune dysfunction.
authors.affiliation: Georgia Prevention Institute, Department of Pediatrics, Medical College of Georgia, Augusta, GA, USA. xwang@mcg.edu
authors.forename: Xiaoling
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Haidong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Harold
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Snieder
authors.forename: Shaoyong
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Su
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Munn
authors.forename: Gregory
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Harshfield
authors.forename: Bernard L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Maria
authors.forename: Yanbin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Dong
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Treiber
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gutin
authors.forename: Huidong
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Shi
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D018899:CpG Islands; D019175:DNA Methylation; D005260:Female; D015894:Genome, Human; D006801:Humans; D007962:Leukocytes / Q000473:pathology*; D008297:Male; D009765:Obesity / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology* / Q000473:pathology*; D055815:Young Adult