The Effect of Citalopram on Genome-Wide DNA Methylation of Human Cells
Riya R. Kanherkar; Bruk Getachew; Joseph Ben-Sheetrit; Sudhir Varma; Thomas Heinbockel; Yousef Tizabi; Antonei B. Csoka
International Journal of Genomics2018-07-25
Summary (paraphrased)
Human embryonic kidney (HEK-293) cells were cultured in 50 micromolar citalopram for 30 days and then profiled genome-wide for DNA methylation changes. Of roughly 25,000 gene promoters assayed, 626 showed significant differential methylation versus controls (272 hypomethylated, 354 hypermethylated). Pathway analysis flagged nervous-system development and function, cellular growth and proliferation, and depression-related gene networks as the most affected systems, with BDNF, FSH, and NF-kappaB predicted as upstream regulators from their methylated targets. The authors present this as a first proof of concept that common prescription drugs can exert persistent off-target epigenetic effects.
Why it’s in the corpus
First genome-wide demonstration that citalopram reprograms DNA methylation across hundreds of promoters, directly supporting the epigenetic-persistence hypothesis for post-drug syndromes. Co-author Csoka is also the author of the corpus's foundational pharmacoepigenomics paper (PSSD-005), making this a mechanistic bridge between them.
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