Hidradenitis suppurativa associated telomere‐methylome dysregulations in blood

Background Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a chronic debilitating disease with a significant burden of both organic and psychological comorbidities. It has been shown that certain telomere‐related genes (TRGs) affect a wide range of diseases, including HS and its associated comorbidities, but their exact role in HS pathogenesis is still unknown. Objectives To determine whether TRG methylomes can be used as biomarkers in HS. Methods Using the Illumina HumanMethylation450 BeadChip array, we examined methylation variations associated with TRGs in HS cases and age‐, sex‐ and ethnicity‐matched healthy controls. The study utilized integrated bioinformatics statistical methods, such as a false discovery rate (FDR), the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) and principal component analysis. Results There were a total of 585 different differentially methylated CpG sites identified in 585 TRGs associated with HS (474 hypomethylated and 111 hypermethylated) (FDR p‐value