Epigenome-wide association study of the whole blood DNA in men with congenital hypopituitarism disease

Congenital hypopituitarism (CH) is chracterized with one or more hormones secreted deficiency by the pituitary gland, which leads to metabolic disorders, amenorrhea and infertility of the patients; however, the involved molecular mechanisms has not yet fully elucidated. We examined genome-wide methylation levels of whole blood DNA in 12 CH patients and 12 age-matched controls using Illumina HumanMethylation450 array. Significantly different methylated loci were further validated in another 40 patients and 40 controls with quantitative bisulfite pyrosequencing method. Case-Control