Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Yousefi, Paul Darius
• Richmond, Rebecca
• Langdon, Ryan
• Ness, Andrew
• Liu, Chunyu
• Levy, Daniel
• Relton, Caroline
• Suderman, Matthew
• Zuccolo, Luisa

Titel

Validation and characterisation of a DNA methylation alcohol biomarker across the life course

Ist Teil von

• Clinical epigenetics, 2019-11, Vol.11 (1), p.163, Article 163

Ort / Verlag

Germany: BioMed Central Ltd

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

SpringerLink

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Recently, an alcohol predictor was developed using DNA methylation at 144 CpG sites (DNAm-Alc) as a biomarker for improved clinical or epidemiologic assessment of alcohol-related ill health. We validate the performance and characterise the drivers of this DNAm-Alc for the first time in independent populations. In N = 1049 parents from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) Accessible Resource for Integrated Epigenomic Studies (ARIES) at midlife, we found DNAm-Alc explained 7.6% of the variation in alcohol intake, roughly half of what had been reported previously, and interestingly explained a larger 9.8% of Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) score, a scale of alcohol use disorder. Explanatory capacity in participants from the offspring generation of ARIES measured during adolescence was much lower. However, DNAm-Alc explained 14.3% of the variation in replication using the Head and Neck 5000 (HN5000) clinical cohort that had higher average alcohol consumption. To investigate whether this relationship was being driven by genetic and/or earlier environment confounding, we examined how earlier versus concurrent DNAm-Alc measures predicted AUDIT scores. In both ARIES parental and offspring generations, we observed associations between AUDIT and concurrent, but not earlier DNAm-Alc, suggesting independence from genetic and stable environmental contributions. The stronger relationship between DNAm-Alcs and AUDIT in parents at midlife compared to adolescents despite similar levels of consumption suggests that DNAm-Alc likely reflects long-term patterns of alcohol abuse. Such biomarkers may have potential applications for biomonitoring and risk prediction, especially in cases where reporting bias is a concern.