ArticleSchizophrenia bulletin2016
Correspondence of DNA Methylation Between Blood and Brain Tissue and Its Application to Schizophrenia Research.
Article in Schizophrenia bulletin, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 163 papers, 18 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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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
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Who cites it
163 citing papers in PubMed, 18 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 284 citations in OpenAlex.
- Childhood internalising symptoms at ages 3 and 6: a meta-analysis of epigenome-wide associations from cord and peripheral blood.Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines · 2026Pooled it
- Paediatric DNA methylation profile scores: a systematic review and open-source atlas.EBioMedicine · 2026Pooled it
- The impact of adverse childhood experiences on DNA methylation age: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Clinical epigenetics · 2026Pooled it
- Epigenetic and blood markers associated with response to electroconvulsive therapy in patients with depressive disorders.Translational psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Schizophrenia is associated with altered DNA methylation variance.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- The association between prenatal famine, DNA methylation and mental disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Clinical epigenetics · 2023Pooled it
- A systematic review of neuroimaging epigenetic research: calling for an increased focus on development.Molecular psychiatry · 2023Pooled it
- Disease classification for whole-blood DNA methylation: Meta-analysis, missing values imputation, and XAI.GigaScience · 2022Pooled it
- Epigenome-wide association study of global cortical volumes in generation Scotland: Scottish family health study.Epigenetics · 2022Pooled it
- Perinatal stress and methylation of theEpigenetics · 2022Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of epigenome-wide associations between DNA methylation at birth and childhood cognitive skills.Molecular psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- Epigenome-wide meta-analysis of blood DNA methylation and its association with subcortical volumes: findings from the ENIGMA Epigenetics Working Group.Molecular psychiatry · 2021Pooled it
- A multi-ethnic epigenome-wide association study of leukocyte DNA methylation and blood lipids.Nature communications · 2021Pooled it
- Epigenetic mechanisms in schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders: a systematic review of empirical human findings.Molecular psychiatry · 2020Pooled it
- Epigenome-wide Association Study of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Symptoms in Adults.Biological psychiatry · 2019Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of epigenome-wide association studies of cognitive abilities.Molecular psychiatry · 2018Pooled it
- Maternal alcohol consumption and offspring DNA methylation: findings from six general population-based birth cohorts.Epigenomics · 2018Pooled it
- Breastfeeding effects on DNA methylation in the offspring: A systematic literature review.PloS one · 2017Pooled it
- Genetic and epigenetic signatures associated with plasma oxytocin levels in children and adolescents with autism spectrum disorder.Autism research : official journal of the International Society for Autism Research · 2023Trial
- Structural variant discovery and diagnostic impact in rare diseases from short-read and long-read sequencing.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
103 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Given the difficulty of procuring human brain tissue, a key question in molecular psychiatry concerns the extent to which epigenetic signatures measured in more accessible tissues such as blood can serve as a surrogate marker for the brain. Here, we aimed (1) to investigate the blood-brain correspondence of DNA methylation using a within-subject design and (2) to identify changes in DNA methylation of brain-related biological pathways in schizophrenia.We obtained paired blood and temporal lobe biopsy samples simultaneously from 12 epilepsy patients during neurosurgical treatment. Using the Infinium 450K methylation array we calculated similarity of blood and brain DNA methylation for each individual separately. We applied our findings by performing gene set enrichment analyses (GSEA) of peripheral blood DNA methylation data (Infinium 27K) of 111 schizophrenia patients and 122 healthy controls and included only Cytosine-phosphate-Guanine (CpG) sites that were significantly correlated across tissues.Only 7.9% of CpG sites showed a statistically significant, large correlation between blood and brain tissue, a proportion that although small was significantly greater than predicted by chance. GSEA analysis of schizophrenia data revealed altered methylation profiles in pathways related to precursor metabolites and signaling peptides.Our findings indicate that most DNA methylation markers in peripheral blood do not reliably predict brain DNA methylation status. However, a subset of peripheral data may proxy methylation status of brain tissue. Restricting the analysis to these markers can identify meaningful epigenetic differences in schizophrenia and potentially other brain disorders.
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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.