Epigenome-wide study of brain DNA methylation following acute opioid intoxication

Opioid abuse poses significant risk to individuals in the United States and epigenetic changes are a leading potential biomarker of opioid abuse. Current evidence, however, is mostly limited to candidate gene analysis in whole blood. Here, we provide Illumina HumanMethylationEPIC array data generated in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex tissue from 153 deceased invidiuals: 72 who died of acute opioid intoxication, 53 psychiatric controls, and 28 normal controls. Using these data, we conducted an epigenome-wide association study and identified one CpG site within a gene (NTN1) that may be related to opioid use. We also detected accelerated PhenoAge in opioid samples compared to control samples. Genome-wide DNA methylation data were measured in postmortem tissue from the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with the HumanMethylationEPIC array. The dataset includes 153 tissue samples (72 opioid samples; 53 psychiatric controls; 28 normal controls).