Targeted bisulfite sequencing analysis of candidate genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Recent epigenome‐wide association studies (EWAS) have identified a number of loci in specific genes that show robust and reproducible alterations in DNA methylation in Alzheimer’s disease brain samples. The standard method to assess methylation in EWAS is via microarrays, however, these only target a limited number of methylation sites in each gene. Therefore, further analysis of methylation changes across the entire gene are required to determine the exact extent and pattern of methylation changes in disease. In this study we have performed targeted bisulfite sequencing for candidate genes in the Brains for Dementia Research (BDR) tissue sample resource, which is a highly characterized cohort containing tissue with a high degree of standardized pathological, clinical and administrative data available to allow comparative studies.