Figure 6.

Interactions between methylations and disease severity on mortality. The upper panel shows the interaction effects between hypomethylation of each of the four targets and NIHSS score on 3-month mortality. The increased risk of death per 1-point increase in NIHSS score was higher in patients with hypomethylation of each of these 4 targets than in those without hypomethylation of the corresponding target. The middle panel shows the adjusted ORs and corresponding 95% CIs for the associations between NIHSS score and 3-month mortality among subgroups of acute ischemic stroke patients according to the number of hypomethylated targets. The increased risks of death per 1-point increase in NIHSS score were higher in patients with 3 or 4 hypomethylated targets than in those without hypomethylated targets. The lower panel shows the combined effect of the number of hypomethylated targets and disease severity on 3-month mortality. Patients were separated by the number of hypomethylated targets (separated by≤2 hypomethylated targets and ≥3 hypomethylated targets) and disease severity (minor stroke: NIHSS score <5, moderate stroke: NIHSS score 5–14, severe stroke: NIHSS score ≥15). Approximately 25.4% of ischemic stroke patients may have 3 or 4 hypomethylated genes, and nearly 10% of them would die within 3 months of onset, while the 3-month mortality for the overall patients was ~3%. Notably, for severe ischemic stroke patients with 3 or 4 hypomethylated genes, half of them died within 3 months of onset.