Post-traumatic growth of family members of deceased cancer patients and related factors in Japan: A cross-sectional study.

PURPOSE: This study examines the post-traumatic growth (PTG) of bereaved families who care for cancer patients and related factors in Japan. METHODS: Participants included 1298 members of bereaved families of cancer patients (aged 20 or older). An anonymous self-administered questionnaire on PTG, coping, and social support was mailed to 496 bereaved families who provided written informed consent. RESULTS: Responses were obtained from 476 bereaved families; however, since 28 families had missing data, 448 were included for the analyses. The mean age of participants was 61.4 years: 69% women and 45% spouses. The average age of the deceased was 72.8 years old for men (59%). The PTG score of the bereaved families was higher for women than for men (p < 0.0001). Moreover, the Post-Traumatic Growth Inventory Score for those above 65 years of age was higher than of those below 65 years of age (p < 0.0001). A regression analysis confirmed that emotion-focused coping, problem-focused coping, relationship with the deceased, advanced age of bereaved families, and emotional support impacted PTG. CONCLUSION: The significance of the deceased for the bereaved, bereaved family members being older in age, emotion-focused coping, problem-focused coping, and emotional support suggest that these aspects are associated with psychological growth in terms of accepting the death of a loved one and moving forward. It is necessary to evaluate the relationship between the bereaved family and the deceased, the age and gender of the bereaved, coping behaviors, and support status and establish a higher quality bereaved family care system.

MeCP2 knockdown reveals DNA methylation-independent gene repression of target genes in living cells and a bias in the cellular location of target gene products.

MeCP2, a methyl-CpG binding domain (MBD) protein, is known to bind to methylated CpG sites via a conserved MBD, leading to transcriptional repression. However, studies in cell-free system for gene repression and MeCP2 binding have suggested that DNA methylation-independent repression also occurs in living cells. It has been difficult to characterize the target genes of MeCP2 because a limited number have been identified to date. In this context, we screened for MeCP2 target genes using knockdown (KD) experiments combined with microarray gene expression analyses. Of the 49 genes that showed a more than three-fold increase in expression in two independent KD experiments conducted with different siRNA sets, unexpectedly, half (24 genes) did not contain promoter CpG islands (CGIs). Of seven selected genes that did contain CGIs, only two were methylated at the CGI, bound MeCP2 before KD, and reduced MeCP2 after KD. For three, MeCP2 was observed to bind to the unmethylated CGI before KD, and for one MeCP2 was reduced after KD. Another two genes neither had DNA methylation nor bound MeCP2 before KD. Gene ontology analysis suggested that MeCP2 represses a certain group of genes. These results suggest that in addition to the canonical gene repression function, MeCP2 can repress gene expression by binding to unmethylated DNA in particular genes in living cells.

Japanese and North American/European patients with Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome have different frequencies of some epigenetic and genetic alterations.

Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome (BWS) is an imprinting-related human disease. The frequencies of causative alterations such as loss of methylation (LOM) of KvDMR1, hypermethylation of H19-DMR, paternal uniparental disomy, CDKN1C gene mutation, and chromosome abnormality have been described for North American and European patients, but the corresponding frequencies in Japanese patients have not been measured to date. Analysis of 47 Japanese cases of BWS revealed a significantly lower frequency of H19-DMR hypermethylation and a higher frequency of chromosome abnormality than in North American and European patients. These results suggest that susceptibility to epigenetic and genetic alterations differs between the two groups.