The epigenetic etiology of cardiovascular disease in a longitudinal Swedish twin study

BACKGROUND: Studies on DNA methylation have the potential to discover mechanisms of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. However, the role of DNA methylation in CVD etiology remains unclear. RESULTS: We performed an epigenome-wide association study (EWAS) on CVD in a longitudinal sample of Swedish twins (535 individuals). We selected CpGs reaching the Bonferroni-corrected significance level (2 [Formula: see text] 10(–7)) or the top-ranked 20 CpGs with the lowest P values if they did not reach this significance level in EWAS analysis associated with non-stroke CVD, overall stroke, and ischemic stroke, respectively. We further applied a bivariate autoregressive latent trajectory model with structured residuals (ALT-SR) to evaluate the cross-lagged effect between DNA methylation of these CpGs and cardiometabolic traits (blood lipids, blood pressure, and body mass index). Furthermore, mediation analysis was performed to evaluate whether the cross-lagged effects had causal impacts on CVD. In the EWAS models, none of the CpGs we selected reached the Bonferroni-corrected significance level. The ALT-SR model showed that DNA methylation levels were more likely to predict the subsequent level of cardiometabolic traits rather than the other way around (numbers of significant cross-lagged paths of methylation → trait/trait → methylation were 84/4, 45/6, 66/1 for the identified three CpG sets, respectively). Finally, we demonstrated significant indirect effects from DNA methylation on CVD mediated by cardiometabolic traits. CONCLUSIONS: We present evidence for a directional association from DNA methylation on cardiometabolic traits and CVD, rather than the opposite, highlighting the role of epigenetics in CVD development. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s13148-021-01113-6.