ArticleEpigenetics & chromatin2015
Characterization of whole-genome autosomal differences of DNA methylation between men and women.
Article in Epigenetics & chromatin, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 123 papers, 7 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
123 citing papers in PubMed, 7 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 257 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sex effects on DNA methylation affect discovery in epigenome-wide association study of schizophrenia.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- A systematic review on the contribution of DNA methylation to hearing loss.Clinical epigenetics · 2024Pooled it
- Mitochondrial genome-wide analysis of nuclear DNA methylation quantitative trait loci.Human molecular genetics · 2022Pooled it
- A Meta-Analysis of Brain DNA Methylation Across Sex, Age, and Alzheimer's Disease Points for Accelerated Epigenetic Aging in Neurodegeneration.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2021Pooled it
- Pooled it
- DNA Methylation Signatures of Depressive Symptoms in Middle-aged and Elderly Persons: Meta-analysis of Multiethnic Epigenome-wide Studies.JAMA psychiatry · 2018Pooled it
- Meta-analysis of epigenome-wide association studies in newborns and children show widespread sex differences in blood DNA methylation.Mutation research. Reviews in mutation researchPooled it
- Vitamin C supplementation to pregnant smokers alters asthma- and allergy-associated CpGs in child buccal DNA at 5 years of age.Clinical epigenetics · 2025Trial
- Epigenome-Wide Association of Infant Feeding and Changes in DNA Methylation from Birth to 10 Years.Nutrients · 2020Trial
- Article
- An atlas of genetic effects on the monocyte methylome across European and African populations.Genome medicine · 2026Article
- Epigenetic Bridge Between Oxidative Balance of Koreans and TCGA Pan-Cancer Risk: Sex-Specific DNA Methylation Signatures.Antioxidants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Sex differences in endothelial cell biology: cellular phenotypes and molecular regulators.Frontiers in physiology · 2026Review
- DNA methylation signatures of frailty beyond age: a longitudinal study of female and male mice.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Do Glioma Cells Rewire Neural Circuits through Epigenetic Changes? DNA Methylation Analysis of Genes Involved in Neuron-Glioma Communication in the Human Frontal Cortex.Journal of molecular neuroscience : MN · 2025Article
- Epigenetic landscape of hormone-independent sexual dimorphism and characterization of canine XIST.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Sex and gender differences in cancer pathogenesis and pharmacology.Clinical & translational oncology : official publication of the Federation of Spanish Oncology Societies and of the National Cancer Institute of Mexico · 2025Review
- A multi-omics investigation of sarcopenia and frailty: Integrating genomic, epigenomic and telomere length data.Experimental physiology · 2025Article
- Article
- DNA methylation in primary myelofibrosis is partly associated with driver mutations and distinct from other myeloid malignancies.Clinical epigenetics · 2025Article
63 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
24 authors at 7 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundDisease risk and incidence between males and females reveal differences, and sex is an important component of any investigation of the determinants of phenotypes or disease etiology. Further striking differences between men and women are known, for instance, at the metabolic level. The extent to which men and women vary at the level of the epigenome, however, is not well documented. DNA methylation is the best known epigenetic mechanism to date.
resultsIn order to shed light on epigenetic differences, we compared autosomal DNA methylation levels between men and women in blood in a large prospective European cohort of 1799 subjects, and replicated our findings in three independent European cohorts. We identified and validated 1184 CpG sites to be differentially methylated between men and women and observed that these CpG sites were distributed across all autosomes. We showed that some of the differentially methylated loci also exhibit differential gene expression between men and women. Finally, we found that the differentially methylated loci are enriched among imprinted genes, and that their genomic location in the genome is concentrated in CpG island shores.
conclusionOur epigenome-wide association study indicates that differences between men and women are so substantial that they should be considered in design and analyses of future studies.
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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.