Association of Leptin Gene DNA Methylation With Diagnosis and Treatment Outcome of Anorexia Nervosa

Discussion To our knowledge this is the first study reporting changes in DNA methylation of the LEP and LEPR gene in patients with AN longitudinally during therapy and follow-up. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found a lower DNA methylation of the LEP gene promoter in acute AN compared to controls and, in line with our expectations, a DNA hypomethylation of the LEPR gene promoter. Both genes exhibited an increase in methylation during therapy, but only the changes in LEP gene DNA methylation were marked. We consider the LEPR methylation differences as being too small with a too high standard deviation to be biologically significant. The key finding of our study was that patients with full recovery after therapy showed a significantly more pronounced low baseline DNA methylation of the LEP gene with an increase of more than 8% at the 12-months follow-up, while patients with a partial syndrome AN after therapy started with a higher methylation which increased less. The DNA methylation of non-responders with a full syndrome AN after therapy remained stable over time. Finally, we tested the predictive properties of lower LEP DNA methylation and were able to distinguish BMI trajectories in a previously unclassified group of patients via an ROC-curves derived cut-off from the analysis of the full recovery AN vs. the full syndrome AN group. To date, only one pilot study has assessed LEP methylation in AN, reporting no differences between patients and controls (13). This pilot stud...
Source: Frontiers in Psychiatry - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research