Figure 7.

Immune cell composition and inter-individual whole-blood methylation variation

(A) Validation of MSA methylome deconvolution with sorted immune cell methylation profiles; columns: MSA-profiled samples, rows: reference cell types.

(B) Estimated immune cell proportions in 64 whole-blood methylomes.

(C) Principal-component analysis (PCA) shows immune cell composition and sex as major sources of variance.

(D) Age-related immune cell composition dynamics: CD4⁺ T cell proportions decrease and neutrophils increase with age. p values testing slope coefficients in linear regression are plotted.

(E) Sex differences in immune cell composition. p values testing sex-specific slope coefficients in linear regression are plotted.

(F) Enrichment of EWAS trait-associated CpGs in sites with high inter-individual methylation variation in whole-blood samples.