Imgenberg-Kreuz J, et al. - Researchers evaluated DNA methylation profiles in a large collection of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and healthy individuals in order to discover novel epigenetic associations and investigate their relationship to genetic risk for SLE. Results demonstrated that at regulatory regions of target genes, several of the genetic risk variants for SLE could exert their influence on the phenotype through alteration of DNA methylation levels. Experts noted a relationship between genotype and variance of methylation at 20 differentially methylated CpGs (DMCs) in SLE, including at the HLA-DQB2 locus.