title: LINE-1 methylation is associated with an increased risk of ischemic stroke in men.
abstract: The level of global DNA methylation may be related to the cerebrovascular disease. The methylation level of Long Interspersed Nucleotide Element 1 (LINE-1) can represent the global methylation level. We investigated the association between the methylation levels of LINE-1 and ischemic stroke in Chinese. Two hundred and eighty patients of ischemic stroke and 280 age- and sex-matched controls were enrolled. The mean percentage of three CpG sites of LINE-1 was calculated for each subject and was used for analysis. Twenty four samples were re-checked for reproducibility of the methylation assay. Multivariate regression model was used to estimate the odds ratio of stroke risk for one percent change of methylation. Sex-specific analysis was also conducted. Thirty-two cases and 11 controls did not pass the methylation assay criteria, and were excluded from further analysis. The intra-class correlation has a coefficient of 0.97 for the methylation assay. The stroke cases had a lower methylation level than controls (p=0.002), especially male subjects (p=0.001). Sex-specific analysis showed that a decrease of 1% methylation level in men could increase a stroke risk by 1.2-fold after adjusting for other risk factors. LINE-1 methylation levels did not have a significant association with stroke in women. The present study shows that a lower level of LINE-1 methylation was associated with a higher risk for ischemic stroke in men, but methylation level in women did not affect the stroke risk. Our finding in Chinese is consistent with a previous result based on elderly white men.
authors.forename: Reuy-Tay
authors.initials: RT
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Edward
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Hsi
authors.forename: Hsiu-Fen
authors.initials: HF
authors.lastname: Lin
authors.forename: Yi-Chu
authors.initials: YC
authors.lastname: Liao
authors.forename: Yung-Song
authors.initials: YS
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Department of Genome Medicine, Kaohsiung Medical University, 100 TzYou First Road, Kaohsiung 80708, Taiwan. hjuo@kmu.edu.tw.
authors.forename: Suh-Hang H
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Juo
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D001786:Blood Glucose; D015992:Body Mass Index; D019175:DNA Methylation; D005215:Fasting; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020084:Long Interspersed Nucleotide Elements / Q000235:genetics*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D020521:Stroke / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000235:genetics*; D015898:Tomography Scanners, X-Ray Computed
chemical_list: D001786:Blood Glucose