Aberrant hypermethylation of the suppressor of cytokine signaling 1 gene and its potential role in gouty patients

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Objective: Gout is a complex disease with both genetic and dietary risk factors. In the current study, we investigated whether aberrant DNA methylation contributes to the development of gout.
Methods: We used an Illumina Human Methylation27 BeadChip to target the global CG sites of DNA methylation and used Q-PCR to assay the target gene mRNA expression.
Results: Suppressor of cytokine signaling 1 (SOCS1) was found to be hypermethylated and caspase 2 (CASP2) was found to be hypomethylated in patients with gout; these results were verified by pyrosequencing. To determine whether these alterations to promoter DNA methylation were correlated with gene expression, we performed Q-PCR, which revealed that SOCS1 mRNA expression was significantly decreased in patients with gout.
Conclusion: These findings indicate that SOCS1 hypermethylation is associated with gout and suggest that SOCS1 might be a new target for the management of gout.