Preksha Dhyāna Meditation Effect on the DNA Methylation Signature in College Students

The stress and psychological factors affect the human transcriptomic and epigenomic landscapes. Preksha Dhyana meditation (PM) was found to be effective, in novice healthy college student meditators, at the cognitive skills and transcriptomic levels. Recently published data showed that PM induced alterations at the transcriptome level in healthy and novice college students. To decipher potential mechanisms underlying the PM effect at the cellular level, array-based methylation analyses in peripheral blood were performed at baseline and 8 weeks postintervention in 34 participants. Overall, 470 CpG sites were nominally differentially methylated (p ≤ 0.05 and change magnitude from ≥3% to ≤ -3%) between baseline and 8 weeks postintervention with 180 sites hypermethylated and 290 sites hypomethylated. Pathway analysis of the genes linked to the differentially methylated sites revealed the enrichment of several molecular and cellular signaling pathways, especially metabolic and brain function signaling pathways. Besides its beneficial effects on cognitive skills and transcriptome alterations, the current data indicate that PM meditation also affects the DNA methylation profile of novice and healthy college students 8 weeks postintervention. NCT03779269.