An epigenome-wide association analysis of cardiac autonomic responses among a population of welders |
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| Authors: | Jinming Zhang Zhonghua Liu Peter E. Umukoro Jennifer M. Cavallari Shona C. Fang Marc G. Weisskopf |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA;2. Department of Biostatistics, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA;3. Department of Community Medicine and Health Care, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, CT, USA;4. Department of Epidemiology, New England Research Institute, Watertown, NY, USA;5. Department of Epidemiology, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA |
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| Abstract: | DNA methylation is one of the potential epigenetic mechanisms associated with various adverse cardiovascular effects; however, its association with cardiac autonomic dysfunction, in particular, is unknown. In the current study, we aimed to identify epigenetic variants associated with alterations in cardiac autonomic responses. Cardiac autonomic responses were measured with two novel markers: acceleration capacity (AC) and deceleration capacity (DC). We examined DNA methylation levels at more than 472,506 CpG probes through the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip assay. We conducted separate linear mixed models to examine associations of DNA methylation levels at each CpG with AC and DC. One CpG (cg26829071) located in the GPR133 gene was negatively associated with DC values after multiple testing corrections through false discovery rate. Our study suggests the potential functional importance of methylation in cardiac autonomic responses. Findings from the current study need to be replicated in future studies in a larger population. |
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| Keywords: | Acceleration deceleration epigenetics EWAS GPR133 heart rate |
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