Genome-wide methylation profiling of Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome patients without molecular confirmation after routine diagnostics

I. M. Krzyzewska, M. Alders, S. M. Maas, J. Bliek, A. Venema, P. Henneman, F. I. Rezwan, K. V. D. Lip, A. N. Mul, D. J. G. Mackay, M. M. A. M. Mannens

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Abstract

Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome (BWS) is caused due to the disturbance of imprinted genes at chromosome 11p15. The molecular confirmation of this syndrome is possible in approximately 85% of the cases, whereas in the remaining 15% of the cases, the underlying defect remains unclear. The goal of our research was to identify new epigenetic loci related to BWS. We studied a group of 25 patients clinically diagnosed with BWS but without molecular conformation after DNA diagnostics and performed a whole genome methylation analysis using the HumanMethylation450 Array (Illumina). We found hypermethylation throughout the methylome in two BWS patients. The hypermethylated sites in these patients overlapped and included both non-imprinted and imprinted regions. This finding was not previously described in any BWS-diagnosed patient. Furthermore, one BWS patient exhibited aberrant methylation in four maternally methylated regions - IGF1R, NHP2L1, L3MBTL, and ZDBF2 - that overlapped with the differentially methylated regions found in BWS patients with multi-locus imprinting disturbance (MLID). This finding suggests that the BWS phenotype can result from MLID without detectable methylation defects in the primarily disease-associated loci (11p15). Another patient manifested small but significant aberrant methylation in disease-associated loci at 11p near H19, possibly confirming the diagnosis in this patient.
Original languageEnglish
Article number53
JournalClinical epigenetics
Volume11
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Mar 2019

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