ML-Assisted Epigenome-Wide Association Study (ML-EWAS)

Machine learning-assisted EWAS integrates conventional epigenome-wide association testing with machine learning models to identify DNA methylation sites associated with a phenotype of interest. By combining the statistical rigour of EWAS with the pattern-recognition power of algorithms such as elastic net, random forest, or gradient boosting, this approach handles the extreme dimensionality of methylation arrays (450,000–850,000 CpG sites) more effectively than univariate testing alone, and can capture non-linear and interaction effects that standard linear models miss.