Fig. 1

Flowchart of bioinformatic analyses. Two analyses were performed in parallel to assess differential DNA methylation between FASD cases and controls. The first analysis, using 206 samples (110 FASD and 96 controls), identified 1661 differentially methylated (DM) sites and 3005 differentially methylated regions (DMR). The second, using a more genetically homogenous subgroup composed of 49 FASD cases and 87 controls, identified 5242 DM sites and 289 DMRs. These were used to filter out the sites identified in the first analysis that might have been confounded by differences in ethnic proportions between the two groups, resulting in a final list of 658 DM CpGs and 101 DMRs free of the confounding effects of ethnicity