Fig. 1

High cortisol was generally associated with DNA hypomethylation. a Shows hair cortisol levels in the Hi and Lo groups. Gender was later used as covariate in the whole-genome methylation analysis. b The DMRs between Hi and Lo in the whole-genome methylation analysis were primarily hypomethylated in Hi (red line) compared to Lo (blue line). This relationship diminished with lower whole-genome p value of the DMRs, but was still statistically detectable at p < 0.0001 when compared to the whole-genome distribution. c Genomic view of the most significant DMR between Hi and Lo, located in the fifth intron of PRDM14 (red peak) within a DNA transposon (green boxes) and close to a plausible CTCF binding site (light blue box). The top axis represents the Log2 p values of individual 300 bp genomic windows; red indicates hypo- and blue hypermethylation in Hi (n = 24) compared to Lo (n = 24) children. The bottom axis shows relative methylation, given as mean read counts per window of all children (n = 48) divided by number of CpGs in a given window. The arrows indicate direction of transcription. Note that the promoter region is completely unmethylated. ****p < 0.0001, ***p < 0.001, *p < 0.05, and #p < 0.1. Error bars shows standard errors