TY - JOUR T1 - Leukocyte counts based on site-specific DNA methylation analysis JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/150110 SP - 150110 AU - Joana Frobel AU - Tanja Božić AU - Michael Lenz AU - Peter Uciechowski AU - Yang Han AU - Reinhild Herwartz AU - Klaus Strathmann AU - Susanne Isfort AU - Jens Panse AU - André Esser AU - Carina Birkhofer AU - Uwe Gerstenmaier AU - Thomas Kraus AU - Lothar Rink AU - Steffen Koschmieder AU - Wolfgang Wagner Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/06/14/150110.abstract N2 - The composition of white blood cells is usually assessed by histomorphological parameters or flow cytometric measurements. Alternatively, leukocyte differential counts (LDCs) can be estimated by deconvolution algorithms for genome-wide DNA methylation (DNAm) profiles. We identified cell-type specific CG dinucleotides (CpGs) that facilitate relative quantification of leukocyte subsets. Site-specific analysis of DNAm levels by pyrosequencing provides similar precision of LDCs as conventional methods, whereas it is also applicable to frozen samples and requires only very small volumes of blood. Furthermore, we describe a new approach for absolute quantification of cell numbers based on a non-methylated reference DNA. Our “Epi-Blood-Count” facilitates robust and cost effective analysis of blood counts for clinical application. ER -