Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D) has a complex genetic and environmental architecture that underlies its development and clinical presentation. Despite the identification of well over a hundred genetic variants and CpG sites that associate with T2D, a robust biosignature that could be used to prevent or forestall clinical disease has not been developed. Based on the premise that underlying genetic variation influences DNA methylation (DNAm) independently of or in combination with environmental exposures, we assessed the ability of local and distal gene x methylation (GxMeth) interactive effects to improve cg19693031 models for predicting T2D status in an African American cohort. Using genome-wide genetic data from 506 subjects, we identified a total of 1476 GxMeth terms associated with HbA1c values. The GxMeth SNPs map to biological pathways associated with the development and complications of T2D, with genetically contextual differences in methylation observed only in diabetic subjects for two GxMeth SNPs (rs2390998 AG vs. GG, p = 4.63 × 10-11, Δβ = 13%, effect size = 0.16 [95% CI = 0.05, 0.32]; rs1074390 AA vs. GG, p = 3.93 × 10-4, Δβ = 9%, effect size = 0.38 [95% CI = 0.12, 0.56]. Using a repeated stratified k-fold cross-validation approach, a series of balanced random forest classifiers with random under-sampling were built to evaluate the addition of GxMeth terms to cg19693031 models to discriminate between normoglycemic controls versus T2D subjects. The results were compared to those obtained from models incorporating only the covariates (age, sex and BMI) and the addition of cg19693031. We found a post-pruned classifier incorporating 10 GxMeth SNPs and cg19693031 adjusted for covariates predicted the T2D status, with the AUC, sensitivity, specificity and precision of the positive target class being 0.76, 0.81, 0.70 and 0.63, respectively. Comparatively, the AUC, sensitivity, specificity and precision using the covariates and cg19693031 were only 0.71, 0.74, 0.67 and 0.59, respectively. Collectively, we demonstrate correcting for genetic confounding of cg19693031 improves its ability to detect type 2 diabetes. We conclude that an integrated genetic-epigenetic approach could inform personalized medicine programming for more effective prevention and treatment of T2D.
Keywords: DNA methylation; epigenetics; type 2 diabetes.