Project description:Treatment with recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) has been consistently reported to induce transcriptional changes in various human tissues including peripheral blood. For other hormones it has been shown that the induction of such transcriptional effects is conferred or at least accompanied by DNA-methylation changes. To analyse effects of short term rhGH treatment on the DNA-methylome we investigated a total of 24 patients at baseline and after 4-day rhGH stimulation. We performed array-based DNA-methylation profiling of paired peripheral blood mononuclear cell samples followed by targeted validation using bisulfite pyrosequencing. Unsupervised analysis of DNA-methylation in this short-term treated cohort revealed clustering according to individuals rather than treatment. Supervised analysis identified 239 CpGs as significantly differentially methylated between baseline and rhGH-stimulated samples (p<0.0001, unadjusted paired t-test), which nevertheless did not retain significance after adjustment for multiple testing. An individualised evaluation strategy led to the identification of 2350 CpG and 3 CpH sites showing methylation differences of at least 10% in more than 2 of the 24 analysed sample pairs. To investigate the long term effects of rhGH treatment on the DNA-methylome, we analysed peripheral blood cells from an independent cohort of 36 rhGH treated children born small for gestational age (SGA) as compared to 18 untreated controls. Median treatment interval was 33 months. In line with the groupwise comparison in the short-term treated cohort no differentially methylated targets reached the level of significance in the long-term treated cohort. We identified marked intra-individual responses of DNA-methylation to short-term rhGH treatment. These responses seem to be predominately associated with immunologic functions and show considerable inter-individual heterogeneity. The latter is likely the cause for the lack of a rhGH induced homogeneous DNA-methylation signature after short- and long-term treatment, which nevertheless is well in line with generally assumed safety of rhGH treatment. Bisulfite-converted DNA of PBMC from 24 patients before and after 4 days of rhGH treatment were hybridized to the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation 450k BeadChip.

Project description:Treatment with recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) has been consistently reported to induce transcriptional changes in various human tissues including peripheral blood. For other hormones it has been shown that the induction of such transcriptional effects is conferred or at least accompanied by DNA-methylation changes. To analyse effects of short term rhGH treatment on the DNA-methylome we investigated a total of 24 patients at baseline and after 4-day rhGH stimulation. We performed array-based DNA-methylation profiling of paired peripheral blood mononuclear cell samples followed by targeted validation using bisulfite pyrosequencing. Unsupervised analysis of DNA-methylation in this short-term treated cohort revealed clustering according to individuals rather than treatment. Supervised analysis identified 239 CpGs as significantly differentially methylated between baseline and rhGH-stimulated samples (p<0.0001, unadjusted paired t-test), which nevertheless did not retain significance after adjustment for multiple testing. An individualised evaluation strategy led to the identification of 2350 CpG and 3 CpH sites showing methylation differences of at least 10% in more than 2 of the 24 analysed sample pairs. To investigate the long term effects of rhGH treatment on the DNA-methylome, we analysed peripheral blood cells from an independent cohort of 36 rhGH treated children born small for gestational age (SGA) as compared to 18 untreated controls. Median treatment interval was 33 months. In line with the groupwise comparison in the short-term treated cohort no differentially methylated targets reached the level of significance in the long-term treated cohort. We identified marked intra-individual responses of DNA-methylation to short-term rhGH treatment. These responses seem to be predominately associated with immunologic functions and show considerable inter-individual heterogeneity. The latter is likely the cause for the lack of a rhGH induced homogeneous DNA-methylation signature after short- and long-term treatment, which nevertheless is well in line with generally assumed safety of rhGH treatment. Bisulfite converted DNA of PB from 36 SGA born children treated long-term with rhGH and 18 SGA born children with no rhGH treatment (controls) were hybridized to the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation 450k Bead Chip.

Project description:Treatment with recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) has been consistently reported to induce transcriptional changes in various human tissues including peripheral blood. For other hormones it has been shown that the induction of such transcriptional effects is conferred or at least accompanied by DNA-methylation changes. To analyse effects of short term rhGH treatment on the DNA-methylome we investigated a total of 24 patients at baseline and after 4-day rhGH stimulation. We performed array-based DNA-methylation profiling of paired peripheral blood mononuclear cell samples followed by targeted validation using bisulfite pyrosequencing. Unsupervised analysis of DNA-methylation in this short-term treated cohort revealed clustering according to individuals rather than treatment. Supervised analysis identified 239 CpGs as significantly differentially methylated between baseline and rhGH-stimulated samples (p<0.0001, unadjusted paired t-test), which nevertheless did not retain significance after adjustment for multiple testing. An individualised evaluation strategy led to the identification of 2350 CpG and 3 CpH sites showing methylation differences of at least 10% in more than 2 of the 24 analysed sample pairs. To investigate the long term effects of rhGH treatment on the DNA-methylome, we analysed peripheral blood cells from an independent cohort of 36 rhGH treated children born small for gestational age (SGA) as compared to 18 untreated controls. Median treatment interval was 33 months. In line with the groupwise comparison in the short-term treated cohort no differentially methylated targets reached the level of significance in the long-term treated cohort. We identified marked intra-individual responses of DNA-methylation to short-term rhGH treatment. These responses seem to be predominately associated with immunologic functions and show considerable inter-individual heterogeneity. The latter is likely the cause for the lack of a rhGH induced homogeneous DNA-methylation signature after short- and long-term treatment, which nevertheless is well in line with generally assumed safety of rhGH treatment.

Project description:Study question: Do short-term and long-term exposures to low dose folic acid supplementation alter DNA methylation in sperm? Summary answer: No alterations in sperm DNA methylation patterns were found following the administration of low dose folic acid supplements of 400 μg/day for 90 days (short-term exposure) or when pre-fortification of food with folic acid and post-fortification sperm samples (long-term exposure) were compared. What is known already: Excess dietary folate may be detrimental to health and DNA methylation profiles due to folate’s role in one carbon metabolism and the formation of S-adenosyl methionine, the universal methyl donor. DNA methylation patterns are established in developing male germ cells and have been suggested to be affected by high dose (5 mg/day) folic acid supplementation. Participants/materials, setting, methods: Blood and seminal plasma folate levels were measured in participants before and following the 90-day treatment with placebo or supplement. Sperm DNA methylation was assessed using the whole genome and genome-wide techniques, MassArray epityper, restriction landmark genomic scanning, methyl-CpG immunoprecipitation and Illumina HumanMethylation450 Bead Array. Main results and the role of chance: Following treatment, supplemented individuals had significantly higher levels of blood and seminal plasma folates compared to placebo. Initial first generation genome-wide analyses of sperm DNA methylation showed little evidence of changes when comparing pre- and post-treatment samples. With Illumina HumanMethylation450 BeadChip arrays, no significant changes were observed in individual probes following low-level supplementation; when compared with those of the post-fortification cohort, there were also few differences in methylation despite exposure to years of fortified foods. Limitations, reasons for caution: This study was limited to the number of participants available in each cohort, in particular those who were not exposed to early (pre-1998) fortification of food with folic acid. While genome-wide DNA methylation was assessed with several techniques that targeted genic and CpG rich regions, intergenic regions were less well interrogated. Wider implications of the findings: Overall, our findings provide evidence that short term exposure to low dose folic acid supplements of 400 μg/day, over a period of 3 months, a duration of time that might occur during infertility treatments, has no major impact on the sperm DNA methylome.

Project description:The effect of pre and periconceptional multiple micronutrient supplementation on methylation of CpG loci within CpG islands associated with 14,000 genes across the human genome has been investigated in the offspring of a cohort of Gambian women participating in a controlled double blinded trial. Methylation levels in placebo and micronutrient supplemented cohorts were compared in genomic DNA from cord blood (35 placebo and 21 micronutrient supplemented) and in circulating blood samples (14 placebo and 9 micronutrient supplemented) drawn from the same cohort at 9 months old. A small number of differentially methylated CpG loci were identified in cord blood (14 in males and 21 in females) and a larger number in the 9 month infant comparison (108 in males and 106 in females). Seven differentially methylated loci in males and 8 in females persisted from cord to infant. These findings indicate that micronutrient supplementation pre-conception or early in embryonic development is potentially associated with programming of gene activity at birth, which is maintained into early infanthood. Strikingly, the loci affected by micronutrient supplementation differed between males and females, with no shared changes in cord blood and only 5 shared changes at 9 months. Additionally, a large number of CpG loci showed variation in methylation level when comparing 9-month samples to cord blood samples. These postnatal changes were more consistent between sexes, with 85% of female alterations being found as a subset of male changes in the placebo cohort and 62% of the female changes shared with males in the supplemented cohort. Taken together, the results suggest that there is a core developmental program shared between the sexes that is unaffected by nutrient supplementation, but that there are also sex-specific developmental changes which are altered under conditions of micronutrient supplementation and deficiency. Bisulphite converted DNA from 59 cord (36 placebo and 23 treated) and 25 infant peripheral blood (15 placebo and 10 treated) samples were hybridised to the Illumina Infinium 27k Human Methylation Beadchip v1.2. (For further analysis, five were excluded during quality control leaving 56 cord (35 placebo and 21 treated) and 23 infant peripheral blood (14 placebo and 9 treated) samples. Full data set of 84 samples were submitted to GEO)

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In vivo investigations of the effect of short- and long-term recombinant growth hormone treatment on DNA-methylation in humans

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