Witt SH, Frank J, Frischknecht U, et al. - Given that in alcohol-dependent individuals, withdrawal is a serious and seldom life-threatening event and there is a possible role of epigenetic processes in this context, researchers sought to determine genes and pathways implicated in such processes which hint to related mechanisms underlying withdrawal. They conducted a cross-sectional case-control study and longitudinal within-cases study during alcohol withdrawal and after 2 weeks of recovery at Addiction Medicine Departments in two university hospitals in southern Germany. They assessed 99 alcohol-dependent male patients who underwent inpatient treatment and were experiencing severe withdrawal symptoms during detoxification and 95 age-matched male controls. Noticeable epigenome-wide significant (false discovery rate < 0.05) discrepancies were observed between patients during withdrawal and after 2 weeks (2,876 CpG sites), as well as between patients and controls (9,845 and 6,094 CpG sites comparing patients at time point 1 and patients at time point 2 vs controls, respectively). Findings suggest an association of acute alcohol withdrawal in severely dependent male patients with extensive changes in epigenome-wide methylation patterns. In particular, there appeared an influence of this condition on the genes involved in the immune system response.