Figure 1

A lower mRNA expression and a higher methylation level of IRF8 in the DCs of active VKH patients is detected than normal controls. (A) DCs from normal controls and active VKH patients were cultured and collected to detect the expression of IRF8 with real-time PCR (normal controls: n = 9; VKH patients: n = 7, **p < 0.01). Methylation levels of the CpG sites between −441 and −225 from TSS of the first exon were detected with matrix assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometer in the DCs of VKH patients and normal controls. The methylation changes shown in CpG_1 (B), CpG_7.8 (C) and CpG_16 (D) of VKH patients were increased compared with normal controls (VKH, n = 20; normal controls, n = 30, *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01). The data are shown as mean ± SEM. All the values were normally distributed. Unpaired t test was used to compare the methylation change of a certain CpG site between two groups.