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Promoter hypermethylation in CSF3R induces peripheral neutrophil reduction in benzene‐exposure poisoning

Benzene is a global pollutant and has been established to cause leukemia. To better understand the role of DNA methylation in benzene toxicity, peripheral blood mononuclear cells were collected from six benzene‐poisoning patients and six matched controls for genome‐wide DNA methylation screening by Illumina Infinium Methylation 450 BeadChip. The Gene Chip Human Gene 2.0 ST Array (Affymetrix) was used to analyze global mRNA expression. Compared with the corresponding sites of controls, 442 sites in patients were hypermethylated, corresponding to 253 genes, and 237 sites were hypomethylated, corresponding to 130 genes. The promoter methylation and mRNA expression of CSF3R, CREB5, and F2R were selected for verification by bisulfite sequencing and real‐time PCR in a larger data set with 21 cases and 23 controls. The results indicated that promoter methylation of CSF3R (p = .005) and F2R (p = .015) was significantly higher in cases than in controls. Correlation analysis showed that the promoter methylation of CSF3R (p < .001) and F2R (p < .001) was highly correlated with its mRNA expression. In the poisoning cases, neutrophil percentage was significantly different among the high, middle, and low CSF3R‐methylation groups (p = .002). In particular, the neutrophil percentage in the high CSF3R‐methylation group (48.10 ± 9.63%) was significantly lower than that in the low CSF3R‐methylation group (59.30 ± 6.26%) (p = .012). The correlation coefficient between promoter methylation in CSF3R and the neutrophil percentage was −0.445 (p = .020) in cases and − 0.398 (p = .060) in controls. These results imply that hypermethylation occurs in the CSF3R promoter due to benzene exposure and is significantly associated with a reduction in neutrophils.