ArticleMolecular psychiatry2021
Sex-differential DNA methylation and associated regulation networks in human brain implicated in the sex-biased risks of psychiatric disorders.
Article in Molecular psychiatry, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
51 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 96 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
- Sex effects on DNA methylation affect discovery in epigenome-wide association study of schizophrenia.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Distinct sex-specific DNA methylation differences in Alzheimer's disease.Alzheimer's research & therapy · 2022Pooled it
- Sex-specific DNA methylation differences in Alzheimer's disease pathology.Acta neuropathologica communications · 2021Pooled 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
- Sex Differences in Brain Cell Type-Specific Chromatin Accessibility in Schizophrenia.Biological psychiatry · 2026Article
- Inflammation-induced impairment of synaptic plasticity accelerates atherosclerosis co-depression disease: insights from bioinformatics analysis and transcriptomics.Cell & bioscience · 2026Article
- Roles of NRXN1 in neuropsychiatric disorders: from genetic lesion to molecular mechanism.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Review
- Whole-genome profiling of age- and sex-associated DNA methylation signatures in human plasma cell-free DNA.Communications medicine · 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
- KnowYourCG: Facilitating base-level sparse methylome interpretation.Science advances · 2025Article
- Steroid hormone-mediated epigenetic programming during puberty: uncovering links to depression.Epigenomics · 2025Review
- A comprehensive guide to genomeZhong nan da xue xue bao. Yi xue ban = Journal of Central South University. Medical sciences · 2025Review
- Genetic risk predicts adolescent mood pathology via sexual differentiation of brain function and physiological aging.Nature communications · 2025Article
- The Role of Long Non-Coding RNA in Anxiety Disorders: A Literature Review.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Review
- Effects of positive mGlu5 modulation on DJournal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Multi-omic quantitative trait loci link tandem repeat size variation to gene regulation in human brain.Nature genetics · 2025Article
- Article
- Review
- Epigenetic profiles in blood and adipose tissue: identifying strong correlations in morbidly obese and non-obese patients.Journal of molecular medicine (Berlin, Germany) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
14 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Many psychiatric disorders are characterized by a strong sex difference, but the mechanisms behind sex-bias are not fully understood. DNA methylation plays important roles in regulating gene expression, ultimately impacting sexually different characteristics of the human brain. Most previous literature focused on DNA methylation alone without considering the regulatory network and its contribution to sex-bias of psychiatric disorders. Since DNA methylation acts in a complex regulatory network to connect genetic and environmental factors with high-order brain functions, we investigated the regulatory networks associated with different DNA methylation and assessed their contribution to the risks of psychiatric disorders. We compiled data from 1408 postmortem brain samples in 3 collections to identify sex-differentially methylated positions (DMPs) and regions (DMRs). We identified and replicated thousands of DMPs and DMRs. The DMR genes were enriched in neuronal related pathways. We extended the regulatory networks related to sex-differential methylation and psychiatric disorders by integrating methylation quantitative trait loci (meQTLs), gene expression, and protein-protein interaction data. We observed significant enrichment of sex-associated genes in psychiatric disorder-associated gene sets. We prioritized 2080 genes that were sex-biased and associated with psychiatric disorders, such as NRXN1, NRXN2, NRXN3, FDE4A, and SHANK2. These genes are enriched in synapse-related pathways and signaling pathways, suggesting that sex-differential genes of these neuronal pathways may cause the sex-bias of psychiatric disorders.
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