Genome-Wide DNA Methylation Analysis of Chinese Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus Identified Hypomethylation in Genes Related to the Type I Interferon Pathway

BACKGROUND: Epigenetic variants have been shown in recent studies to be important contributors to the pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Here, we report a 2-step study of discovery followed by replication to identify DNA methylation alterations associated with SLE in a Chinese population. Using a genome-wide DNA methylation microarray, the Illumina Infinium HumanMethylation450 BeadChip, we compared the methylation levels of CpG …