Sex-based comparison of CD4+ T cell DNA methylation patterns in SLE reveals pro-inflammatory epigenetic changes in men

Male patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) experience severe disease compared to female patients, despite the disease being more prevalent in females. For the time, we compared genome-wide differential methylation in CD4+ T cells between male (n=12) and female (n=10) SLE patients. Illumina Infinium MethylationEPIC array of genomic DNA from CD4+ T cells extracted from peripheral blood mononuclear cells of 12 male SLE patients and 10 female SLE patients.