Impact of meditation on gene exoression and their methylation
Meditators exhibited significantly higher promoter region methylation in IL6 (p < 0.001) and CXCL8 (p = 0.001). The methylation level at specific CpG sites showed that four out of 16 sites in IL6 and five out of twelve sites in the CXCL8 gene had significantly higher methylation in meditators. Although no significant difference in the overall methylation level in the promoter regions of TNF and IFNG genes was detected, two out of 12 sites and one out of 27 sites in the TNF and IFNG genes, respectively, showed significantly higher methylation in meditators.