Maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, offspring epigenome-wide DNA methylation, and childhood obesity: findings from the Boston Birth Cohort

Table 2 Epigenome-wide DNA methylation association study identified 8 CpG sites significantly associated with maternal pre-pregnancy body mass index in 903 mother–child pairs from the Boston Birth Cohort

Chr	CpG	Gene	Relation to Gene	EWAS
Chr	CpG	Gene	Relation to Gene	β (SE)^a	P	FDR
6	cg13694461	(HLA-E^b)	/	0.00012 (2.09E − 05)	4.94E − 08	0.036
15	cg22940988	AAGAB	Body	− 0.00032(6.04E − 05)	1.01E − 07	0.037
4	cg02266725	ALPK1	Body	− 0.00036 (6.80E − 05)	2.23E − 07	0.037
10	cg06466203	PTEN KILLIN;	5'UTR TSS200	0.00018 (3.50E − 05)	3.44E − 07	0.037
22	cg10272744	LL22NC01-81G9.3	TSS1500	− 0.00067 (1.30E − 04)	3.58E − 07	0.037
8	cg21701395	TP53INP1	5'UTR	0.00026 (4.89E − 05)	2.31E − 07	0.037
6	cg22307152	(LINC01625^b)	/	− 0.00032 (6.12E − 05)	3.27E − 07	0.037
5	cg23151800	ERCC8	Body	− 0.00050 (9.78E − 05)	5.03E − 07	0.046

Linear regression was fitted with adjustment for child’s sex, maternal age at delivery, maternal race, maternal education level, maternal alcohol consumption, parity, gestational age, estimated cord blood cell composition (CD4 + , CD8 + T cells, B cells, monocytes, granulocytes, natural killer cells, and nucleated red blood cells), and all surrogate variables. CpG = cytosine-phosphoguanine site; Chr = chromosome; EWAS = epigenome-wide association; SE = standard error; FDR = false discovery rate; TSS200 = within 200 bp from transcription start site; TSS1500 = within 1500 bp from transcription start site; Body = the CpG is in gene body; and UTR = untranslated region
^aEffect sizes were calculated based on normalized methylation values, denoting the methylation difference per unit increase of maternal BMI
^bFor inter-genic CpG sites, we used the UCSC Genome Browser on Human (GRCh37/hg19) to locate the nearest annotated gene

ISSN: 1741-7015