Adherence
Smoking is a common external environmental factor driving specific DNA methylation patterns (VINYLPHENOL loci group) associated with 4-vinylphenol sulfate levels in blood.
Smoking directly alters your DNA methylation patterns, which in turn affects your blood metabolism, specifically regarding compounds like 4-vinylphenol sulfate. This provides a biological mechanism for why smoking is harmful beyond just lung damage. Quitting smoking may help normalize these epigenetic and metabolic markers.
Therefore, it is likely that the association between CpG – methylation and 4-vinylphenol sulfate for the sites of the VINYLPHENOL loci group is driven by the common environmental factor smoking.
Why this rating
Strong statistical association, validation with previous studies on smoking and methylation, but observational.
Source
Epigenetics meets metabolomics: an epigenome-wide association study with blood serum metabolic traits
Ann-Kristin Petersen et al. · Human Molecular Genetics · 2013
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