LINE-1 Methylation is Associated with an Increased Risk of Ischemic Stroke in Men

Title:LINE-1 Methylation is Associated with an Increased Risk of Ischemic Stroke in Men

Volume: 11 Issue: 1

Author(s): Reuy-Tay Lin, Edward Hsi, Hsiu-Fen Lin, Yi-Chu Liao, Yung-Song Wang and Suh-Hang H. Juo

Affiliation:

Keywords: DNA Methylation, LINE-1, Ischemic stroke.

Abstract: The level of global DNA methylation may be related to the cerebrovascular disease. The methylation level of Long Interspersed Nucleotide Element 1 (LINE-1) can represent the global methylation level. We investigated the association between the methylation levels of LINE-1 and ischemic stroke in Chinese. Two hundred and eighty patients of ischemic stroke and 280 age- and sex-matched controls were enrolled. The mean percentage of three CpG sites of LINE-1 was calculated for each subject and was used for analysis. Twenty four samples were re-checked for reproducibility of the methylation assay. Multivariate regression model was used to estimate the odds ratio of stroke risk for one percent change of methylation. Sex-specific analysis was also conducted. Thirty-two cases and 11 controls did not pass the methylation assay criteria, and were excluded from further analysis. The intra-class correlation has a coefficient of 0.97 for the methylation assay. The stroke cases had a lower methylation level than controls (p=0.002), especially male subjects (p=0.001). Sex-specific analysis showed that a decrease of 1% methylation level in men could increase a stroke risk by 1.2-fold after adjusting for other risk factors. LINE-1 methylation levels did not have a significant association with stroke in women. The present study shows that a lower level of LINE-1 methylation was associated with a higher risk for ischemic stroke in men, but methylation level in women did not affect the stroke risk. Our finding in Chinese is consistent with a previous result based on elderly white men.

Cite this article as:

Lin Reuy-Tay, Hsi Edward, Lin Hsiu-Fen, Liao Yi-Chu, Wang Yung-Song and Juo H. Suh-Hang, LINE-1 Methylation is Associated with an Increased Risk of Ischemic Stroke in Men, Current Neurovascular Research 2014; 11 (1) . https://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1567202610666131202145530