In utero arsenic exposure and epigenome-wide associations in placenta,umbilical artery,and human umbilical vein endothelial cells |
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Authors: | Andres Cardenas E Andres Houseman Andrea A Baccarelli Quazi Quamruzzaman Mahmuder Rahman Golam Mostofa Robert O Wright David C Christiani Molly L Kile |
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Institution: | 1.School of Biological and Population Health Sciences; College of Public Health and Human Sciences; Oregon State University; Corvallis, OR USA;2.Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Boston, MA USA;3.Dhaka Community Hospital; Dhaka, Bangladesh;4.Preventative Medicine and Pediatrics; Mt Sinai School of Medicine; New York, NY USA |
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Abstract: | Exposure to arsenic early in life has been associated with increased risk of several chronic diseases and is believed to alter epigenetic programming in utero. In the present study, we evaluate the epigenome-wide association of arsenic exposure in utero and DNA methylation in placenta (n = 37), umbilical artery (n = 45) and human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) (n = 52) in a birth cohort using the Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip array. Unadjusted and cell mixture adjusted associations for each tissue were examined along with enrichment analyses relative to CpG island location and omnibus permutation tests of association among biological pathways. One CpG in artery (cg26587014) and 4 CpGs in placenta (cg12825509; cg20554753; cg23439277; cg21055948) reached a Bonferroni adjusted level of significance. Several CpGs were differentially methylated in artery and placenta when controlling the false discovery rate (q-value<0.05), but none in HUVEC. Enrichment of hypomethylated CpG islands was observed for artery while hypermethylation of open sea regions were present in placenta relative to prenatal arsenic exposure. The melanogenesis pathway was differentially methylated in artery (Max F P < 0.001), placenta (Max F P < 0.001), and HUVEC (Max F P = 0.02). Similarly, the insulin-signaling pathway was differentially methylated in artery (Max F P = 0.02), placenta (Max F P = 0.02), and HUVEC (Max F P = 0.02). Our results show that prenatal arsenic exposure can alter DNA methylation in artery and placenta but not in HUVEC. Further studies are needed to determine if these alterations in DNA methylation mediate the effect of prenatal arsenic exposure and health outcomes later in life. |
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Keywords: | arsenic DNA methylation epigenetics environmental epigenetics fetal programming Illumina 450K in utero exposure |
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