Crohn’s disease, an inflammatory bowel disease of the gastrointestinal tract (1), causes significant morbidity and nearly 3.5 billion dollars in lost economic productivity in the United States (2) due to complications of the disease. We mined transcriptome and methylome datasets (3, 4) to understand, in an unbiased manner, the most significant changes in gene expression and DNA methylation in the hematopoietic system of patients with Crohn’s disease (CD). We identified the zinc finger and BTB (broad complex, tramtrack, bric-à-brac) domain-containing gene ZBTB6 (5, 6) as one of the most differentially expressed genes in the whole blood of patients with Crohn’s disease. Analysis of a separate data revealed that the ZBTB6 locus was one of the most differentially methylated sites globally in the blood of patients with Crohn’s disease when compared to the blood of healthy patients. ZBTB6 is differentially methylated and differentially expressed in the blood of patients with Crohn’s disease, and more significantly so than the vast majority of the human genome. These data point to inhibition of ZBTB6 gene expression by hyper-methylation of the ZBTB6 locus and suggest that titration of some function or transcriptional target of ZBTB6 may be an important event in the pathogenesis of Crohn’s disease.
P071 LACK OF EFFECT OF CONCOMITANT IMMUNOSUPPRESSANT AND/OR CORTICOSTEROID TREATMENT IN PATIENTS WITH ACTIVE CROHN'S DISEASE: ANALYSIS OF CERTOLIZUMAB PEGOL DATA