Cardiac DNA Methylation Underlies Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities among Patients with End-Stage Heart Failure (RNA-seq)
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ABSTRACT: African Americans (AA) are 70% more likely than Caucasian Americans (CA) to die from heart failure (HF) even after adjusting for known causes. Although the causal factors responsible for this racial disparity remain unknown, it is theorized that environmental stressors This alarming health disparity represents an important challenge to U.S. healthcare as global prevalence of heart failure has already exceeded epidemic levels with a disease burden that disproportionately impacts members of ethnic and racial minorities. The current multicohort study of cardiac DNA methylation identifies the cardiac epigenome as a previously unrecognized syntax that encodes race-based environmental differences in the failing human heart.
Project description:African Americans (AA) are 70% more likely than Caucasian Americans (CA) to die from heart failure (HF) even after adjusting for known causes. Although the causal factors responsible for this racial disparity remain unknown, it is theorized that environmental stressors This alarming health disparity represents an important challenge to U.S. healthcare as global prevalence of heart failure has already exceeded epidemic levels with a disease burden that disproportionately impacts members of ethnic and racial minorities. The current multicohort study of cardiac DNA methylation identifies the cardiac epigenome as a previously unrecognized syntax that encodes race-based environmental differences in the failing human heart.
Project description:Heart Failure (HF) is a multifactorial syndrome and that remains a leading cause of worldwide morbidity. Despite its high prevalence, only half 50% of HF patients respond to guideline-directed medical management, prompting therapeutic efforts . Therapeutic avenues are forced to confront the molecular underpinnings of its heterogeneity of HF as a clinical syndrome to identify novel molecular targets. In both pilot (n = 11) and testing (n = 31) cohorts (n = 31), unsupervised multidimensional scaling of genome-wide myocardial DNA methylation exhibited a bimodal distribution of CpG methylation found largely to occur in the promoter regions of metabolic genes.. Among the available patient attributes, only categorical patient race could delineate this methylation signature, with African American (AA) and Caucasian American (CA) samples clustering separately. Because race is a social construct, and thus a poor proxy of human physiology, extensive review of medical records was conducted, but ultimately failed to identify co-variates of race at the time of LVAD surgery. By contrast, retrospective analysis exposed a higher all-cause mortality among AA (56.3%) relative to CA (16.7%) patients at 2 years following LVAD placement (P = 0.03). .G To mitigate concerns of genetic confounding factors, putative single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were identified by proximity to CpG methylation sites. Nevertheless, a minor proportion of SNPs (0.15%) was identified, and no evidence of racial dissimilarity was seen among them. By contrast, geocoding-based approximation of patient demographics uncovered disparities in income levels among AA relative to CA patients. Therefore, Although although additional studies studies are warrantedneeded, our multicohort studythe current analysis implicates identifies cardiac DNA methylation as as a previously unrecognized indicator of socioeconomic disparity in human heart failure outcomes.
Project description:Cardiac DNA Methylation Underlies Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities among Patients with End-Stage Heart Failure (MethylationEPIC array)
Project description:Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a rare and devastating connective tissue disorder that results in fibrosis and vascular abnormalities that affect the skin and visceral organs, and SSc-associated pulmonary fibrosis (SSc-PF) is the leading cause of death amongst SSc patients. Racial disparity is noticeable in SSc as African Americans (AA) have a higher frequency and severity of diseases than European Americans (EA). Using RNAseq, we determined differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in primary pulmonary fibroblasts (pFBs) outgrown from SSc-PF lungs (SScL) and normal lungs (NL) of AA and EA patients to characterize the unique transcriptomic signatures of AA-NL and AA-SScL pFBs by performing a systems level analysis. We identified 69 DEGs in “AA-NL vs. EA-NL” and 384 DEGs in “AA-SScL vs. EA-SScL” comparisons, and only 7.5% DEGs were commonly deregulated in the “SScL vs. NL in AA and EA” disease mechanisms comparison. Surprisingly, we also identified a disease-like signature in AA-NL pFBs. Our data highlight that the transcriptome of AA pFBs is unique and may hold the key to understanding racial disparity in SSc-PF, the first step in developing efficacious therapeutic strategies.
Project description:We evaluate the epigenetic mechanisms of racial disparity in HCC through an integrated analysis of DNA methylation, miRNA, and combined regulation of gene expression. Specifically, we acquired DNA methylation, mRNA-seq, and miRNA-seq data through the analysis of tumor and adjacent normal liver tissues from African Americans (AA) and European Americans (EA) with HCC. Results: Using mixed ANOVA, we identified cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) sites, mRNAs, and miRNAs that are statistically significantly altered in HCC vs. adjacent normal in a race-specific manner. Through integrative analysis, we identified significantly differentially expressed genes in HCC with disparate epigenetic regulation, associated with changes in miRNA expression for AA and DNA methylation for EA.
Project description:We evaluate the epigenetic mechanisms of racial disparity in HCC through an integrated analysis of DNA methylation, miRNA, and combined regulation of gene expression. Specifically, we acquired DNA methylation, mRNA-seq, and miRNA-seq data through the analysis of tumor and adjacent normal liver tissues from African Americans (AA) and European Americans (EA) with HCC. Results: Using mixed ANOVA, we identified cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) sites, mRNAs, and miRNAs that are statistically significantly altered in HCC vs. adjacent normal in a race-specific manner. Through integrative analysis, we identified significantly differentially expressed genes in HCC with disparate epigenetic regulation, associated with changes in miRNA expression for AA and DNA methylation for EA.
Project description:We evaluate the epigenetic mechanisms of racial disparity in HCC through an integrated analysis of DNA methylation, miRNA, and combined regulation of gene expression. Specifically, we acquired DNA methylation, mRNA-seq, and miRNA-seq data through the analysis of tumor and adjacent normal liver tissues from African Americans (AA) and European Americans (EA) with HCC. Results: Using mixed ANOVA, we identified cytosine-phosphate-guanine (CpG) sites, mRNAs, and miRNAs that are statistically significantly altered in HCC vs. adjacent normal in a race-specific manner. Through integrative analysis, we identified significantly differentially expressed genes in HCC with disparate epigenetic regulation, associated with changes in miRNA expression for AA and DNA methylation for EA.
Project description:Atherosclerosis and pressure overload are major risk factors for the development of heart failure in patients. Cardiac hypertrophy often precedes the development of heart failure. However, underlying mechanisms are incompletely understood. To investigate pathomechanisms underlying the transition from cardiac hypertrophy to heart failure we used experimental models of atherosclerosis- and pressure overload-induced cardiac hypertrophy and failure, i.e. apolipoprotein E (apoE)-deficient mice, which develop heart failure at an age of 18 months, and non-transgenic C57BL/6J (B6) mice with heart failure triggered by 6 months of pressure overload induced by abdominal aortic constriction (AAC). The development of heart failure was monitored by echocardiography, invasive hemodynamics and histology. The microarray gene expression study of cardiac genes was performed with heart tissue from failing hearts relative to hypertrophic and healthy heart tissue, respectively. The microarray study revealed that the onset of heart failure was accompanied by a strong up-regulation of cardiac lipid metabolism genes involved in fat synthesis, storage and oxidation.