Forty patients (16 ICUS, 9 CCUS and 15 MDS patients, referred to as the comparison group in Fig. 1) had both peripheral blood and bone marrow samples collected, and there was a high correlation between the mean LEP promoter methylation levels measured using pyrosequencing in peripheral blood granulocytes and the mean LEP promoter methylation levels measured using the microarray in bone marrow MNCs (R = 0.71, p = 9.4 × 10–7, Additional file 2: Fig. S7). Here, LEP is linked to myelodysplastic syndrome.