Fig. 1

Differentially methylated probes between konzo and control samples reveal unique epigenetic signatures that may relate to clinical presentation and etiology of konzo. A Heat Map of DMPs, in beta values, between Konzo Cases and Controls. Limma function in R was used to perform linear regression analysis on normalized beta values between konzo cases and age-matched healthy controls. Significant DMPs were determined using a threshold FDR p value of < 0.05 and log2 fold-change cutoff of < − 1 or > 1. Z-scores used for scaling for ease in visualization. B Box-and-whisker plot visualization of mean methylation per cell type: B cell (Bcell), Cd4 T cell (Cd4T), Cd8 T cell (Cd8T), monocyte (Mono), neutrophil (Neu), and natural killer cells (NK). This analysis was performed for each condition, Konzo (blue) and Control (red). Wilcoxon test was performed and are not statistically significant (p ≥ 0.05). Whiskers represent the upper and lower bounds of the mean ± standard deviation. C Gene Ontology enrichment (GO) analysis of DMPs found in promoter regions (transcription start sites or 5′ UTR) associated with konzo. Significant GO terms were determined by a p value cutoff of < 0.05. Most enriched values were determined using absolute log10 p value