Figure 1.

Workflow for assessing the potential mediation effects of DNA methylation in blood in mid-childhood on the associations of BMI z-score in mid-childhood with cardio-metabolic risk score in early adolescence (M_p represents DNA methylation at each CpG. Joint M is the joint natural indirect effect via DNA methylation at the CpGs that were selected in more than 95% of the leave-one-out cross validation tests in the high-dimensional mediation analysis. Illustration for high-dimensional mediation analysis was reproduced according to Zhang et al. 2016 [38] and Boca et al. 2014 [78]).