Trial reportPloS one2012
Differential DNA methylation in purified human blood cells: implications for cell lineage and studies on disease susceptibility.
Trial report in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 670 papers, 14 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
670 citing papers in PubMed, 14 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 1,090 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
- Accelerated epigenetic age in hypertension: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Hypertension research : official journal of the Japanese Society of Hypertension · 2026Pooled it
- Breastfeeding association with DNA methylation in the pregnancy and childhood epigenetics (PACE) consortium.Clinical epigenetics · 2026Pooled it
- A meta-analysis of epigenome-wide association studies of ultra-processed food consumption with DNA methylation in European children.Clinical epigenetics · 2025Pooled it
- Animal and plant protein intake during infancy and childhood DNA methylation: a meta-analysis in the NutriPROGRAM consortium.Epigenetics · 2024Pooled it
- Cesarean delivery and blood DNA methylation at birth and childhood: Meta-analysis in the Pregnancy and Childhood Epigenetics Consortium.Science advances · 2024Pooled it
- Maternal educational attainment in pregnancy and epigenome-wide DNA methylation changes in the offspring from birth until adolescence.Molecular psychiatry · 2024Pooled it
- Analysis of DNA methylation at birth and in childhood reveals changes associated with season of birth and latitude.Clinical epigenetics · 2023Pooled it
- A meta-analysis of immune-cell fractions at high resolution reveals novel associations with common phenotypes and health outcomes.Genome medicine · 2023Pooled it
- Maternal Mediterranean diet in pregnancy and newborn DNA methylation: a meta-analysis in the PACE Consortium.Epigenetics · 2022Pooled it
- Epigenetic signatures relating to disease-associated genotypic burden in familial risk of bipolar disorder.Translational psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- Longitudinal associations of DNA methylation and sleep in children: a meta-analysis.Clinical epigenetics · 2022Pooled it
- Maternal Glycemic Dysregulation During Pregnancy and Neonatal Blood DNA Methylation: Meta-analyses of Epigenome-Wide Association Studies.Diabetes care · 2022Pooled it
- The Potential Use of Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells as Biomarkers for Treatment Response and Outcome Prediction in Psychiatry: A Systematic Review.Molecular diagnosis & therapy · 2021Pooled it
- Effects of 6-months of SSRI use on DNA-methylation and gene expression in blood.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2026Trial
- DNA methylation GrimAge acceleration in US military veterans with PTSD.Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology · 2023Trial
- Peripheral blood DNA methylation partially reports on immune cell type composition in the frontal brain.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2026Article
- Genetic and epigenetic contributors to cleft laterality: evidence from monozygotic mirror twins and replication cohorts.Human molecular genetics · 2026Article
- Genome-wide DNA methylation profiling of triple-negative breast cancer uncovers epigenetic biomarkers of tumor identity and the immune microenvironment.NPJ breast cancer · 2026Article
- DNA Methylation as a Programmable Information Layer: From Molecular Marks to Disease State Engineering.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
610 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
9 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Methylation of cytosines at CpG sites is a common epigenetic DNA modification that can be measured by a large number of methods, now even in a genome-wide manner for hundreds of thousands of sites. The application of DNA methylation analysis is becoming widely popular in complex disorders, for example, to understand part of the "missing heritability". The DNA samples most readily available for methylation studies are derived from whole blood. However, blood consists of many functionally and developmentally distinct cell populations in varying proportions. We studied whether such variation might affect the interpretation of methylation studies based on whole blood DNA. We found in healthy male blood donors there is important variation in the methylation profiles of whole blood, mononuclear cells, granulocytes, and cells from seven selected purified lineages. CpG methylation between mononuclear cells and granulocytes differed for 22% of the 8252 probes covering the selected 343 genes implicated in immune-related disorders by genome-wide association studies, and at least one probe was differentially methylated for 85% of the genes, indicating that whole blood methylation results might be unintelligible. For individual genes, even if the overall methylation patterns might appear similar, a few CpG sites in the regulatory regions may have opposite methylation patterns (i.e., hypo/hyper) in the main blood cell types. We conclude that interpretation of whole blood methylation profiles should be performed with great caution and for any differences implicated in a disorder, the differences resulting from varying proportions of white blood cell types should be considered.
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What Socratic holds
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 Socratic graph.