Evaluación del estado de metilación del complejo mayor de histocompatibilidad clase 1, C (HLA-C) y su posible correlación con el estado nutricional de madres e infantes Kichwa en Ecuador.

Abstract

Epigenetic alterations have been shown to have a high impact on the health and development of an individual, in this article we analyze for the first time the levels and patterns of methylation of exon 1 of HLA-C in Kichwa population of Ecuador, using saliva samples obtained at 2 times in an interval of 8 months and sequenced with nanopore technology. We found that there is no significant difference in the percentages of methylation in exon 1 of HLA-C of mothers and children after l8 months of lactation and life respectively, however, we found that infants tend to increase their methylation level in the first 2 years of life while mothers tend to decrease it after the first 2 years of lactation. When comparing methylation levels between mothers and infants we found that at T1 there is significant difference (p-value: 0.0148) as mothers have on average X̅= 2.06% and infants X̅=1.57% while for T2 this difference is not maintained. We also identified that along the 122bp comprising exon 1 of HLA-C, cytosines 32-33, 43-44 & 96-97 retain methylation patterns in time and inheritance. Finally, we found that there is a correlation between vitamin D deficiency and increased methylation in infants, for the other variables no correlation was found between nutritional status and HLA-C exon 1 methylation levels.