ArticleInternational journal of epidemiology2012
Associations with early-life socio-economic position in adult DNA methylation.
Article in International journal of epidemiology, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 182 papers, 9 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
182 citing papers in PubMed, 9 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Socioeconomic Inequalities and Molecular Risk for Aging in Young Adulthood.American journal of epidemiology · 2023Pooled it
- Epigenetic Factors Related to Low Back Pain: A Systematic Review of the Current Literature.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Pooled it
- How are social determinants of health integrated into epigenetic research? A systematic review.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2021Pooled it
- Novel DNA methylation signatures of tobacco smoking with trans-ethnic effects.Clinical epigenetics · 2021Pooled it
- Adverse childhood experiences, epigenetics and telomere length variation in childhood and beyond: a systematic review of the literature.European child & adolescent psychiatry · 2020Pooled it
- Appraising the causal relevance of DNA methylation for risk of lung cancer.International journal of epidemiology · 2019Pooled it
- Pooled it
- Associations between body size, nutrition and socioeconomic position in early life and the epigenome: A systematic review.PloS one · 2018Pooled it
- An epigenome-wide association study meta-analysis of educational attainment.Molecular psychiatry · 2017Pooled it
- The methylome in females with adolescent Conduct Disorder: Neural pathomechanisms and environmental risk factors.PloS one · 2022Trial
- Psychosocial adversity and socioeconomic position during childhood and epigenetic age: analysis of two prospective cohort studies.Human molecular genetics · 2018Trial
- Healthy Foundations Study: a randomised controlled trial to evaluate biological embedding of early-life experiences.BMJ open · 2018Trial
- Biological marks of early-life socioeconomic experience is detected in the adult inflammatory transcriptome.Scientific reports · 2016Trial
- MethylCog predicts six-year cognitive ability beyond blood-based ADRD biomarkers.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Development and validation of MethylCog, a blood DNA methylation proxy for cognition.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2026Article
- Differential Methylation by Early Life Adversity in the Future of Families Child Wellbeing Study.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Environmental exposures and epigenetic alterations in common chronic diseases: insights and challenges.Environmental epigenetics · 2026Review
- Breaking research silos to achieve equitable precision medicine in rheumatology.Nature reviews. Rheumatology · 2025Review
- Low household income increases risks for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in young population: a nationwide retrospective cohort study in South Korea.BMJ open respiratory research · 2024Article
- Cumulative Stress Across the Life Course and Biological Aging in Adulthood.Psychosomatic medicine · 2024Article
122 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundDisadvantaged socio-economic position (SEP) in childhood is associated with increased adult mortality and morbidity. We aimed to establish whether childhood SEP was associated with differential methylation of adult DNA.
methodsForty adult males from the 1958 British Birth Cohort Study were selected from SEP extremes in both early childhood and mid-adulthood. We performed genome-wide methylation analysis on blood DNA taken at 45 years using MeDIP (methylated DNA immunoprecipitation). We mapped in triplicate the methylation state of promoters of approximately 20,000 genes and 400 microRNAs. Probe methylation scores were averaged across triplicates and differential methylation between groups of individuals was determined. Differentially methylated promoter sites of selected genes were validated using pyrosequencing of bisulfite-converted DNA.
resultsVariably methylated probes (9112 from n = 223,359 on the microarray) corresponded to 6176 gene promoters with at least one variable probe. Unsupervised hierarchical clustering of probes obtained from the 500 most variable promoters revealed a cluster enriched with high SEP individuals confirming that SEP differences contribute to overall epigenetic variation. Methylation levels for 1252 gene promoters were associated with childhood SEP vs 545 promoters for adulthood SEP. Functionally, associations with childhood SEP appear in promoters of genes enriched in key cell signalling pathways. The differentially methylated promoters associated with SEP cluster in megabase-sized regions of the genome.
conclusionsAdult blood DNA methylation profiles show more associations with childhood SEP than adult SEP. Organization of these associations across the genome suggests a well-defined epigenetic pattern linked to early socio-economic environment.
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