Obesity is a recognised risk factor for EOCRC [49], which may support the hypothesis that risk factors such as obesity may predispose to EOCRC by modulating the DNAm of genes like GSX1. Of our 234 EOCRC DMRs, we found that 13 were also differentially methylated between 47 EOCRC and 164 LOCRC samples from TCGA, albeit there was a notable difference in mean diagnosis ages between the EOCRCs from the two cohorts. The gene discussed is GSX1; the disease is obesity due to melanocortin 4 receptor deficiency.