Epigenetic signatures of intergenerational exposure to violence during pregnancy

There is substantial evidence for intergenerational health effects of trauma. The biological mechanisms linking traumatic exposures with intergenerational health effects remain unclear, but epigenetics represent a candidate mechanism. We measured DNA methyation to test for intergenerational epigenetic signatures of exposure to violence during pregnancy. Participating families were recruited based on generational exposure to violence trauma. There were four groups: unexposed controls, directly exposed to violence, prenatally exposed to violence, and germline exposed to violence. Three separate epigenome-wide association studies compared direct, prenatal, and germline exposure to unexposed controls to test for differentially methylated positions. Bisulphite converted DNA from the 160 samples were hybridised to the Illumina Infinium MethylationEPIC v1.0 Beadchip