Association of psychological distress and DNA methylation: A 5-year longitudinal population-based twin study.

AIM: To identify the psychological distress (PD) associated 5'-cytosine-phosphate-guanine-3' (CpG) sites (CpGs), and investigate the temporal relationship between dynamic changes in DNA methylation (DNAm) and PD. METHODS: This study included 1,084 twins from the Chinese National Twin Register (CNTR). The CNTR conducted epidemiological investigations and blood withdrawal twice in 2013 and 2018. These included twins were used to perform Epigenome-Wide Association Studies (EWAS) and to validate the previously reported PD-associated CpGs selected from previous EWAS in PubMed, EMBASE and the EWAS catalogue. Next, a cross-lagged study was performed to examine the temporality between changes in DNAm and PD in 308 twins who completed both 2013 and 2018 surveys. RESULTS: The EWAS analysis of our study identified 25 CpGs. In the validation analysis, 741 CpGs from 29 previous EWAS studies on PD were selected for validation, and 101 CpGs were validated to be significant at FDR<0.05. The cross-lagged analysis found a unidirectional path from PD to DNAm at 14 CpGs, while no sites showed significance from DNAm to PD. CONCLUSIONS: This study identified and validated PD-related CpG sites in Chinese twin population, and suggested that PD may be the cause of changes in DNAm over time. The findings provide new insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying PD pathophysiology. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.