Fig. 4
Bisulfite pyrosequencing of candidate genes: RIC3 (cg01560972), FAIM2 (cg18486102), EIF2AK3 (cg26347887), and GRIA4 (cg03243226). a No significant mean methylation difference was observed for cg01560972 (RIC3) in AMD (n = 30) compared to normal (n = 25) donor RPE cells (p = 0.9491). b Sex-stratified analysis did not reveal significant differences in AMD male (n = 18) compared to normal male (n = 18) (p = 0.2006). c A significant hypermethylation was observed in AMD female (n = 12) compared to normal female (n = 7) human donor samples (p = 0.0327). d No significant mean methylation difference was observed for cg18486102 (FAIM2) in AMD (n = 30) compared to normal donor RPE cells (n = 25) (p = 0.1672). e Sex-stratified analysis revealed significant differential hypomethylation in males (AMD male n = 19, normal male, n = 18) (p = 0.0276). No significant mean methylation difference was observed in AMD female (n = 11) compared to normal female (n = 7) human donor RPE cells (p = 0.4362). f No significant methylation difference was observed in cg26347887 (EIF2AK3) in AMD (n = 28) compared to human donor samples (n = 23) (p = 0.4546) g–i. Sex-stratified results did not reveal significant methylation changes in males or females. j No significant mean methylation difference was observed for cg03243226 (GRIA4) in AMD (n = 30) compared to human donor RPE cells (n = 25) (p = 0.2053). k Sex-stratified analysis did not show significant differential hypomethylation in AMD male (n = 18) compared to normal male (n = 18) (p = 0.8197); however, a significant mean methylation difference was observed in AMD female (n = 12) compared to normal female (n = 7) (p = 0.0279) human donor RPE samples (l). All statistical analysis was performed using the Mann-Whitney U test (*p ≤ 0.05)