Appraising the causal relevance of DNA methylation for risk of lung cancer

Background DNA methylation changes in peripheral blood have recently been identified in relation to lung cancer risk. Some of these changes have been suggested to mediate part of the effect of smoking on lung cancer. However, limitations with conventional mediation analyses mean that the causal nature of these methylation changes has yet to be fully elucidated. Methods We first performed a meta-analysis of four epigenome-wide association studies...