The epigenome-wide DNA methylation levels were measured in two mutually exclusive subsets from previously published studies using the Illumina Infinium Methylation 450K and EPIC (850K) BeadChip, respectively15 (link),16 . Following the standard protocols, bisulfite-converted DNA samples were whole-genome amplified, enzymatically fragmented, purified and hybridized to the arrays, which were then fluorescently stained, scanned, and assessed for fluorescence intensities. Quality control data normalization and batch correction using control-probe adjustment of the intensity data was performed, as previously described11 (link). We used a quantile normalization approach in the R package “minfi” for processing Methylation 450K and EPIC (850K) data to correct for methylation signals, and to generate adjusted β-values for the associated analyses. After all quality control procedures, a total of 526 samples from the 850K dataset and 549 samples from the 450K dataset were included for the analysis. The DNAm sites measured by the EPIC and 450K chips were mapped to Genome Research Consortium human build 37 (GRCh37).