AUTHOR=Ferrari Luca , Monti Paola , Favero Chiara , Carugno Michele , Tarantini Letizia , Maggioni Cristina , Bonzini Matteo , Pesatori Angela Cecilia , Bollati Valentina 

TITLE=Association between night shift work and methylation of a subset of immune-related genes

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Public Health

VOLUME=10

YEAR=2023

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/public-health/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2022.1083826

DOI=10.3389/fpubh.2022.1083826

ISSN=2296-2565

ABSTRACT=<sec><title>Introduction</title><p>Night shift (NS) work has been associated with an increased risk of different conditions characterized by altered inflammatory and immune responses, such as cardio-metabolic and infectious diseases, cancer, and obesity. Epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation, might mirror alterations in biological processes that are influenced by NS work.</p></sec><sec><title>Methods</title><p>The present study was conducted on 94 healthy female workers with different working schedules and aimed at identifying whether NS was associated with plasmatic concentrations of the inflammatory proteins NLRP3 and TNF-alpha, as well as with DNA methylation levels of ten human endogenous retroviral (HERV) sequences, and nine genes selected for their role in immune and inflammatory processes. We also explored the possible role of the body mass index (BMI) as an additional susceptibility factor that might influence the effects of NS work on the tested epigenetic modifications.</p></sec><sec><title>Results and discussion</title><p>We observed a positive association between NS and NLRP3 levels (<italic>p</italic>-value 0.0379). Moreover, NS workers retained different methylation levels for <italic>ERVFRD-1</italic> (<italic>p</italic>-value = 0.0274), <italic>HERV-L</italic> (<italic>p</italic>-value = 0.0377), and <italic>HERV-P</italic> (<italic>p</italic>-value = 0.0140) elements, and for <italic>BIRC2</italic> (<italic>p</italic>-value = 0.0460), <italic>FLRT3</italic> (<italic>p</italic>-value = 0.0422), <italic>MIG6</italic> (<italic>p</italic>-value = 0.0085), and <italic>SIRT1</italic> (<italic>p</italic>-value = 0.0497) genes. We also observed that the BMI modified the relationship between NS and the methylation of <italic>ERVE, HERV-L</italic>, and <italic>ERVW-1</italic> elements. Overall, our results suggest that HERV methylation could pose as a promising biomolecular sensor to monitor not only the effect of NS work but also the cumulative effect of multiple stressors.</p></sec>