Molecular Epidemiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Epigenetics. 2009 Nov 16;4(8):526-31. doi: 10.4161/epi.4.8.10265. Epub 2009 Nov 6.
World-wide, research initiatives are in progress to establish the role of the epigenome in human disease. Empirical data are still scarce, but particularly studies investigating how the epigenome links early developmental and adult disease may rapidly change this situation. Recently, several reports showed that prenatal environmental conditions are associated with persistent changes of the human epigenome. The evaluation of candidate loci among individuals prenatally exposed to the Dutch Famine indicates that such changes may be common but individually relatively small and may greatly depend on the timing of the exposure during gestation. These findings suggest that the epigenomic contribution to disease risk may entail the combination of multiple changes especially when adaptive responses are involved to cope with environmental conditions. Well-designed epigenome-wide studies will be crucial in creating a catalog of epigenomic regions that are sensitive to the prenatal environment to evaluate developmental influences on common human disease.
在全球范围内，研究人员正在积极探索表观基因组在人类疾病中的作用。目前实证数据仍然有限，但特别研究如何将表观基因组与早期发育和成人疾病联系起来的研究可能会迅速改变这种情况。最近，有几项报告表明，产前环境条件与人类表观基因组的持续变化有关。对荷兰饥荒中经历过产前暴露的个体中的候选基因座进行评估表明，这种变化可能很常见，但个体差异相对较小，并且可能在很大程度上取决于妊娠期间暴露的时间。这些发现表明，表观基因组对疾病风险的贡献可能需要多种变化的组合，特别是当涉及到适应环境条件的反应时。精心设计的全基因组表观遗传学研究对于创建对产前环境敏感的表观基因组区域目录至关重要，这有助于评估发育对常见人类疾病的影响。
