Epigenome analysis of whole-blood samples of septic and healthy preterm neonates

Neonatal sepsis is an important health-care concern worldwide occurring more frequently in premature newborns and for which diagnosis is yet a challenge, causing delays in therapy and increasing the risk of death. DNA methylation, involved in regulating gene expression, has been associated with the development and progression of sepsis. Actually, the detection of differentially methylated regions (DMRs) is a promising epigenetic tool used for diagnosis and prognosis in complex diseases. The present study focuses on two different bioinformatic methods, DMRcate and mCSEA, with the aim of obtaining different methylation traits using Illumina Infinium Human Methylation EPIC data of neonatal sepsis patients. The DMR sets obtained by both approaches can also be overlapped to obtain a reliable set of DMRs which can contribute to improve our understanding on the molecular pathways underlying disease. Blood samples from septic (n=17) and healthy (n=6) preterm infants were hybridized by the Illumina Infinium EPIC Human Methylation Beadchip, following DNA extraction and bisulphite treatment.