Vitamin D insufficiency, low rate of DNA methylation in black teens may increase disease risk

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-04/mcog-vdi042516.php

Public Release: 25-Apr-2016
Vitamin D insufficiency, low rate of DNA methylation in black teens may increase disease risk
Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University

Low levels of vitamin D in black teens correlates with low activity of a major mechanism for controlling gene expression that may increase their risk of cancer and other disease, researchers report.

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While vitamin D deficiency is well-known to be more common in black individuals, who are also known to have generally have lower rates of global DNA methylation, this is the first study to begin to tie those two pieces together, said Dr. Yanbin Dong, geneticist and cardiologist at MCG's Georgia Prevention Institute and the study's senior author.

"This is the first evidence associating low vitamin D levels with hypomethylation," Dong said. "If you don't have enough vitamin D, you don't have enough methylation."

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Low levels of methylation, or hypomethylation, generally leave your entire genome more vulnerable to environmental damage, such as oxidative stress, and disease, Zhu said.

The result, for example, can be some bad genes get turned on, like so-called oncogenes, while tumor-suppressing genes get dialed down. "Basically more things can go wrong," Zhu said. "Methylation is kind of like a brake that controls gene expression," Dong said. "If that brake is removed or damaged, the gene can go in all kinds of directions, and most of the time, it's unfavorable ones."

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