Luo, MannanMeehan, Alan J.Walton, EstherRöder, StefanHerberth, GundaZenclussen, Ana C.Cosín Tomàs, MartaSunyer Deu, JordiMulder, Rosa H.Cortes Hidalgo, Andrea P.Bakermans-Kranenburg, Marian J.Felix, Janine FrédériqueRelton, CarolineSuderman, MatthewPappa, IreneKok, RianneTiemeier, Henningvan IJzendoorn, Marinus H.Barker, Edward D.Cecil, Charlotte A. M.2021-12-202021-12-202021Luo M, Meehan AJ, Walton E, Röder S, Herberth G, Zenclussen AC, Cosín-Tomás M, Sunyer J, Mulder RH, Cortes Hidalgo AP, Bakermans-Kranenburg MJ, Felix JF, Relton C, Suderman M, Pappa I, Kok R, Tiemeier H, van IJzendoorn MH, Barker ED, Cecil CAM. Neonatal DNA methylation and childhood low prosocial behavior: An epigenome-wide association meta-analysis. Am J Med Genet B Neuropsychiatr Genet. 2021;186(4):228-41. DOI: 10.1002/ajmg.b.328621552-4841http://hdl.handle.net/10230/49256Low prosocial behavior in childhood has been consistently linked to later psychopathology, with evidence supporting the influence of both genetic and environmental factors on its development. Although neonatal DNA methylation (DNAm) has been found to prospectively associate with a range of psychological traits in childhood, its potential role in prosocial development has yet to be investigated. This study investigated prospective associations between cord blood DNAm at birth and low prosocial behavior within and across four longitudinal birth cohorts from the Pregnancy And Childhood Epigenetics (PACE) Consortium. We examined (a) developmental trajectories of "chronic-low" versus "typical" prosocial behavior across childhood in a case-control design (N = 2,095), and (b) continuous "low prosocial" scores at comparable cross-cohort time-points (N = 2,121). Meta-analyses were performed to examine differentially methylated positions and regions. At the cohort-specific level, three CpGs were found to associate with chronic low prosocial behavior; however, none of these associations was replicated in another cohort. Meta-analysis revealed no epigenome-wide significant CpGs or regions. Overall, we found no evidence for associations between DNAm patterns at birth and low prosocial behavior across childhood. Findings highlight the importance of employing multi-cohort approaches to replicate epigenetic associations and reduce the risk of false positive discoveries.application/pdfeng© 2021 The Authors. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ajmg.b.32862DNA methylationCord bloodEpigenome-wide association studyMeta-analysisProsocial behaviorinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess