ArticleEpigenetics2015
DNA methylation analysis of Homeobox genes implicates HOXB7 hypomethylation as risk factor for neural tube defects.
Article in Epigenetics, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 44 citations in OpenAlex.
- Folic acid intervention during pregnancy alters DNA methylation, affecting neural target genes through two distinct mechanisms.Clinical epigenetics · 2022Trial
- Multi-tissue DNA methylation analysis to identify an appropriate surrogate tissue for a unique neurological tissue specific to spina bifida.Clinical epigenetics · 2026Article
- Associations of arsenic exposure and folate in maternal leukocyte DNA methylation: a case-control study of mothers with spina-bifida affected children.Environmental health : a global access science source · 2026Article
- Folate-Associated DNA Methylation and Chemotherapy-Induced Toxicities in Patients With Colorectal Cancer.Molecular nutrition & food research · 2025Review
- Protective Effect of myo-Inositol Against Decitabine-Induced Neural Tube Defects in Embryonic Zebrafish.Neurotoxicity research · 2025Article
- Brain development and bioenergetic changes.Neurobiology of disease · 2024Review
- A new approach to study stochastic epigenetic mutations in sperm methylome of Vietnam war veterans directly exposed to Agent Orange.Environmental epigenetics · 2024Article
- Embryonic exposure to decitabine induces multiple neural tube defects in developing zebrafish.Fish physiology and biochemistry · 2023Article
- Genomic Characterization ofAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Early anteroposterior regionalisation of human neural crest is shaped by a pro-mesodermal factor.eLife · 2022Article
- Abnormal methylation caused by folic acid deficiency in neural tube defects.Open life sciences · 2022Review
- Identification of the Key Regulators of Spina Bifida Through Graph-Theoretical Approach.Frontiers in genetics · 2021Article
- Reduced H3K27me3 leads to abnormal Hox gene expression in neural tube defects.Epigenetics & chromatin · 2019Article
- Novel biomarkers to assess in utero effects of maternal opioid use: First steps toward understanding short- and long-term neurodevelopmental sequelae.Genes, brain, and behavior · 2019Article
- Article
- TRIM4 is associated with neural tube defects based on genome-wide DNA methylation analysis.Clinical epigenetics · 2019Article
- Aberrant methylation of Pax3 gene and neural tube defects in association with exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.Clinical epigenetics · 2019Article
- Hypomethylation of GRHL3 gene is associated with the occurrence of neural tube defects.Epigenomics · 2018Article
- Should vitamin BAnnals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2018Review
- A unique methylation pattern co-segregates with neural tube defect statuses in Han Chinese pedigrees.Neurological sciences : official journal of the Italian Neurological Society and of the Italian Society of Clinical Neurophysiology · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Neural tube defects (NTDs) are common birth defects of complex etiology. Though family- and population-based studies have confirmed a genetic component, the responsible genes for NTDs are still largely unknown. Based on the hypothesis that folic acid prevents NTDs by stimulating methylation reactions, epigenetic factors, such as DNA methylation, are predicted to be involved in NTDs. Homeobox (HOX) genes play a role in spinal cord development and are tightly regulated in a spatiotemporal and collinear manner, partly by epigenetic modifications. We have quantified DNA methylation for the different HOX genes by subtracting values from a genome-wide methylation analysis using leukocyte DNA from 10 myelomeningocele (MMC) patients and 6 healthy controls. From the 1575 CpGs profiled for the 4 HOX clusters, 26 CpGs were differentially methylated (P-value < 0.05; β-difference > 0.05) between MMC patients and controls. Seventy-seven percent of these CpGs were located in the HOXA and HOXB clusters, with the most profound difference for 3 CpGs within the HOXB7 gene body. A validation case-control study including 83 MMC patients and 30 unrelated healthy controls confirmed a significant association between MMC and HOXB7 hypomethylation (-14.4%; 95% CI: 11.9-16.9%; P-value < 0.0001) independent of the MTHFR 667C>T genotype. Significant HOXB7 hypomethylation was also present in 12 unaffected siblings, each related to a MMC patient, suggestive of an epigenetic change induced by the mother. The inclusion of a neural tube formation model using zebrafish showed that Hoxb7a overexpression but not depletion resulted in deformed body axes with dysmorphic neural tube formation. Our results implicate HOXB7 hypomethylation as risk factor for NTDs and highlight the importance for future genome-wide DNA methylation analyses without preselecting candidate pathways.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.