Fig. 3

Role of glucocorticoid treatment in the PICU as a contributor to abnormal DNA methylation within HPA-axis genes 2 years later. The boxplots show a univariate presentation of the methylation status (β value) of the CpG sites of which abnormal methylation was aggravated by glucocorticoid treatment, as identified in multivariable analyses adjusting for baseline risk factors and technical variation (p values obtained with multivariable linear regression analyses using the limma framework: cg23416081 p = 0.017, cg15929276 p = 0.0045, cg01839003 p = 0.036, cg22911074 p = 0.018, cg02118020 p = 0.017). Former PICU patients who had received glucocorticoid treatment in the PICU (n = 210) are depicted in orange and those who had not (n = 608) are depicted in green. The central lines of the boxplots depict the medians, the boxes the interquartile ranges, and the whiskers are drawn to the furthest point within 1.5 times the interquartile range from the box. Abbreviations: UTR: untranslated region