Maternal exposure to a high-magnitude earthquake during pregnancy influences pre-reading skills in early childhood.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Batiz LF
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8084950 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:A number of studies have linked obesity with asthma in adults and children. Few longitudinal studies have evaluated the effect of maternal pre-pregnancy obesity on either asthma or early childhood respiratory morbidity, and these have not been in urban, nonwhite populations. We sought to determine whether pre-pregnancy obesity was associated with recurrent wheezing in an urban, nonwhite population. This study includes 1,191 children from the Boston Birth Cohort (1998-present) followed prospectively to a mean age of 3.0?±?2.4 years with study visits aligned with the pediatric primary care schedule. Multivariate logistic regression was used to evaluate the associations of maternal pre-pregnancy obesity (body mass index ?30) with recurrent wheezing (?4 lifetime episodes). Secondary outcomes included log-transformed cord-blood immunoglobulin E (Phadia), and physician diagnoses of eczema and food allergy. Pre-pregnancy obesity was present in 20.7% of mothers. Of the 1,191 children, 60 (5%) developed recurrent wheezing. Children of obese mothers had an increased risk of recurrent wheezing (adjusted odds ratio, 95% confidence interval: 3.51, 1.68-7.32). These associations persisted even after adjustment for fetal growth status. In contrast, maternal obesity was not associated with eczema or food allergy, and was inversely associated with log cord-blood immunoglobulin E (?, 95% confidence interval: -0.34, -0.66 to -0.02). In this predominantly urban, multiracial/ethnic birth cohort, maternal pre-pregnancy obesity was associated with an increased risk of recurrent wheezing. This association was not explained by fetal growth or increased atopy. Maternal pre-pregnancy obesity is a prevalent risk factor for respiratory morbidity in this urban, nonwhite population.
| S-EPMC3281288 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Objective. This study evaluated the effect of antenatal music exposure to primigravida healthy mothers on the behaviour of their term appropriate-for-date newborns assessed using Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (BNBAS). Methods. This was a single-centre, randomized, open-label controlled trial. Primigravida mothers aged 19-29 years, free of chronic medical diseases or significant deafness, with singleton pregnancy, with a gestation of 20 weeks or less, were randomized to listen to a pre-recorded music cassette for approximately 1 hour/day in addition to standard antenatal care (intervention arm) or standard care only (control arm). Perinatal factors with adverse effect on neonatal behaviour were deemed as protocol violations. Outcome measure included scores on 7 clusters of BNBAS. Primary analysis was per protocol. The trial is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT01278329). Results. One hundred and twenty-six newborns in the music group and 134 in the control group were subjected to BNBAS assessment. The infants of mothers exposed to music during pregnancy performed significantly better on 5 of the 7 BNBAS clusters. The maximal beneficial effect was seen with respect to orientation (ES 1.13, 95% CI 0.82-1.44, P < 0.0001) and habituation (ES 1.05, 95% CI 0.53-1.57, P = 0.0001). Conclusion. Prenatal music exposure to mother significantly and favourably influences neonatal behaviour.
| S-EPMC3299264 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe effects of exposure to childhood trauma (CT) may be transmitted across generations; however, the time period(s) and mechanism(s) have yet to be clarified. We address the hypothesis that intergenerational transmission may begin during intrauterine life via the effect of maternal CT exposure on placental-fetal stress physiology, specifically placental corticotropin-releasing hormone (pCRH).MethodsThe study was conducted in a sociodemographically diverse cohort of 295 pregnant women. CT exposure was assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Placental CRH concentrations were quantified in maternal blood collected serially over the course of gestation. Linear mixed effects and Bayesian piece-wise linear models were employed to test hypothesized relationships.ResultsMaternal CT exposure (CT+) was significantly associated with pCRH production. Compared with nonexposed women, CT+ was associated with an almost 25% increase in pCRH toward the end of gestation, and the pCRH trajectory of CT+ women exhibited an approximately twofold steeper increase after the pCRH inflection point at 19 weeks gestation.ConclusionsTo the best of our knowledge, this finding represents the first report linking maternal CT exposure with placental-fetal stress physiology, thus identifying a potential novel biological pathway of intergenerational transmission that may operate as early as during intrauterine life.
| S-EPMC4777678 | biostudies-literature
Project description:There are concerns that prenatal exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals increases children's risk of obesity. African-American and Hispanic children born in the Bronx or Northern Manhattan, New York (1998-2006), whose mothers underwent personal air monitoring for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) exposure during pregnancy, were followed up to ages 5 (n = 422) and 7 (n = 341) years. At age 5 years, 21% of the children were obese, as were 25% of those followed to age 7 years. After adjustment for child's sex, age at measurement, ethnicity, and birth weight and maternal receipt of public assistance and prepregnancy obesity, higher prenatal PAH exposures were significantly associated with higher childhood body size. In adjusted analyses, compared with children of mothers in the lowest tertile of PAH exposure, children of mothers in the highest exposure tertile had a 0.39-unit higher body mass index z score (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.08, 0.70) and a relative risk of 1.79 (95% CI: 1.09, 2.96) for obesity at age 5 years, and they had a 0.30-unit higher body mass index z score (95% CI: 0.01, 0.59), a 1.93-unit higher percentage of body fat (95% CI: 0.33, 3.54), and a relative risk of 2.26 (95% CI: 1.28, 4.00) for obesity at age 7 years. The data indicate that prenatal exposure to PAHs is associated with obesity in childhood.
| S-EPMC3491973 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of embodied learning on children's pre-reading and word reading skills. We conducted a three-armed randomized controlled trial including two intervention groups and one control group. One hundred forty-nine children from grade 0 (5-6 years old) who had just started school were recruited from 10 different classes from four elementary schools. Within each class, children were randomly assigned to receive teaching of letter-sound couplings and word decoding either with whole-body movements (WM), hand movements (HM), or no movements (CON) over an 8-week period. Children were evaluated on pre-reading, word reading, and motor skills before (T1), immediately after (T2), and after 17-22 weeks of retention period (T3) following the intervention. Between-group analysis showed a significant improvement in children's ability to name letter-sounds correctly from T1 to T2 (p < 0.001) and from T1 to T3 (p < 0.05) for WM compared to CON. HM and WM improved significantly in naming conditional letter-sounds from T1 to T2 (p < 0.01, p < 0.01) compared to CON and from T1 to T3 for the HM group compared to CON (p < 0.05). We did not find an effect on word reading or a correlation between motor skill performance and reading. Results from the present study suggest that there are beneficial effects of using whole-body movements for children. Hand motor movements indeed also had a performance effect on letter-sound knowledge; however, the whole-body movements had longer-lasting effects. We do not see an effect on whole word reading.
| S-EPMC9007695 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Infant feeding practices have been hypothesized to influence offspring's body mass index (BMI) later in life, and women with overweight or obesity tend to wean their infants earlier than women with healthy BMI. We, therefore, aimed to investigate how much early age of weaning mediated the maternal-offspring adiposity relationship. The study included 4920 mother-child pairs from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children birth cohort. G-computation was applied to estimate the natural direct (NDE) and indirect (NIE) effects, via the age of weaning (<3 months, 3 months, >3 months), of maternal pre-pregnancy overweight or obesity on offspring's BMI and fat mass index. The NDE of maternal overweight or obesity on offspring BMI at 17 years old was 2.63 kg/m2 (95% CI: 2.27 to 2.99). The NIE via the age of weaning was 0.02 kg/m2 (95% CI: 0.00 to 0.04), corresponding to 0.8% of the total effect. Similar results were observed for the offspring's fat mass index. The NDE and NIE were similar to the main analyses when we looked at the relationship stratified by breastfeeding status. Our study found a minimal influence of age of weaning on the pathway between maternal and offspring adiposity, indicating the age of weaning may not be a key mediator.
| S-EPMC10343873 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The mechanism through which developmental programming of offspring overweight/obesity following in utero exposure to maternal overweight/obesity operates is unknown but may operate through biologic pathways involving offspring anthropometry at birth. Thus, we sought to examine to what extent the association between in utero exposure to maternal overweight/obesity and childhood overweight/obesity is mediated by birth anthropometry. Analyses were conducted on a retrospective cohort with data obtained from one hospital system. A natural effects model framework was used to estimate the natural direct effect and natural indirect effect of birth anthropometry (weight, length, head circumference, ponderal index, and small-for-gestational age [SGA] or large-for-gestational age [LGA]) for the association between pre-pregnancy maternal body mass index (BMI) category (overweight/obese vs normal weight) and offspring overweight/obesity in childhood. Models were adjusted for maternal and child socio-demographics. Three thousand nine hundred and fifty mother-child dyads were included in analyses (1467 [57.8%] of mothers and 913 [34.4%] of children were overweight/obese). Results suggest that a small percentage of the effect of maternal pre-pregnancy BMI overweight/obesity on offspring overweight/obesity operated through offspring anthropometry at birth (weight: 15.5%, length: 5.2%, head circumference: 8.5%, ponderal index: 2.2%, SGA: 2.9%, and LGA: 4.2%). There was a small increase in the percentage mediated when gestational diabetes or hypertensive disorders were added to the models. Our study suggests that some measures of birth anthropometry mediate the association between maternal pre-pregnancy overweight/obesity and offspring overweight/obesity in childhood and that the size of this mediated effect is small.
| S-EPMC7438242 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) have been implicated in the development of obesity in non-pregnant adults. However, few studies have explored the association of POPs with gestational weight gain (GWG), an important predictor of future risk of obesity in both the mother and offspring. We estimated the association of maternal pre-pregnancy levels of 63 POPs with GWG. Data are from women (18-40 years; n = 218) participating in a prospective cohort study. POPs were assessed using established protocols in pre-pregnancy, non-fasting blood samples. GWG was assessed using three techniques: (1) total GWG (difference between measured pre-pregnancy weight and final self-reported pre-delivery weight); (2) category based on pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI)-specific Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendations; and (3) area under the GWG curve (AUC). In an exploratory analysis, effects were estimated separately for women with BMI < 25 kg/m² versus BMI ? 25 kg/m². Multivariable polytomous logistic regression and linear regression were used to estimate the association between each chemical or congener and the three GWG outcomes. p,p'-dichlorodiphenyl trichloroethane (p,p'-DDT) was significantly inversely associated with AUC after adjustment for lipids and pre-pregnancy BMI: beta {95% confidence interval (CI)}, -378.03 (-724.02, -32.05). Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) was significantly positively associated with AUC after adjustment for lipids among women with a BMI < 25 kg/m² {beta (95% CI), 280.29 (13.71, 546.86)}, but not among women with a BMI ? 25 kg/m² {beta (95% CI), 56.99 (-328.36, 442.34)}. In summary, pre-pregnancy levels of select POPs, namely, p,p'-DDT and PFOS, were moderately associated with GWG. The association between POPs and weight gain during pregnancy may be more complex than previously thought, and adiposity prior to pregnancy may be an important effect modifier.
| S-EPMC5036738 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundMaternal pre-pregnancy obesity is an established risk factor for childhood obesity. Investigating epigenetic alterations induced by maternal obesity during fetal development could gain mechanistic insight into the developmental origins of childhood obesity. While obesity disproportionately affects underrepresented racial and ethnic mothers and children in the USA, few studies investigated the role of prenatal epigenetic programming in intergenerational obesity of these high-risk populations.MethodsThis study included 903 mother-child pairs from the Boston Birth Cohort, a predominantly urban, low-income minority birth cohort. Mother-infant dyads were enrolled at birth and the children were followed prospectively to age 18 years. Infinium Methylation EPIC BeadChip was used to measure epigenome-wide methylation level of cord blood. We performed an epigenome-wide association study of maternal pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) and cord blood DNA methylation (DNAm). To quantify the degree to which cord blood DNAm mediates the maternal BMI-childhood obesity, we further investigated whether maternal BMI-associated DNAm sites impact birthweight or childhood overweight or obesity (OWO) from age 1 to age 18 and performed corresponding mediation analyses.ResultsThe study sample contained 52.8% maternal pre-pregnancy OWO and 63.2% offspring OWO at age 1-18 years. Maternal BMI was associated with cord blood DNAm at 8 CpG sites (genome-wide false discovery rate [FDR] < 0.05). After accounting for the possible interplay of maternal BMI and smoking, 481 CpG sites were discovered for association with maternal BMI. Among them 123 CpGs were associated with childhood OWO, ranging from 42% decrease to 87% increase in OWO risk for each SD increase in DNAm. A total of 14 identified CpG sites showed a significant mediation effect on the maternal BMI-child OWO association (FDR < 0.05), with mediating proportion ranging from 3.99% to 25.21%. Several of these 14 CpGs were mapped to genes in association with energy balance and metabolism (AKAP7) and adulthood metabolic syndrome (CAMK2B).ConclusionsThis prospective birth cohort study in a high-risk yet understudied US population found that maternal pre-pregnancy OWO significantly altered DNAm in newborn cord blood and provided suggestive evidence of epigenetic involvement in the intergenerational risk of obesity.
| S-EPMC10463574 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundMaternal pre-pregnancy overweight and obese status has been associated with a number of pregnancy complications and adverse offspring outcomes. Mechanisms for observed associations, however, are largely unknown. We investigated associations of pre-pregnancy body mass index with early-mid pregnancy epigenetic biomarkers, circulating microRNAs.MethodsPeripheral blood was collected from participants (16-27 weeks gestation) of two multi-racial pregnancy cohorts, the Omega Study and the Pregnancy Outcomes and Community Health Study. Plasma miRNA expression was characterised using epigenome-wide (319 miRNAs) profiling among 20 pregnant women in each cohort. Cohort-specific linear regression models that included the predictor (pre-pregnancy body mass index), the outcome (microRNA expression), and adjustment factors (maternal age, gestational age at blood collection, and race) were fit.ResultsExpression of 27 miRNAs was positively associated with pre-pregnancy body mass index in both cohorts (p-values <0.05). A number of these differentially expressed miRNAs have previously been associated with adipogenesis (e.g. let-7d*, miR-103-2*, -130b, -146b-5-p, -29c, and -26b). Identified miRNAs as well as their experimentally validated targets participate in pathways that involve organismal injury, reproductive system disease, connective tissue disorders, cancer, cellular development, growth and proliferation.ConclusionPre-pregnancy body mass index is associated with circulating miRNAs in early-mid pregnancy.
| S-EPMC5403633 | biostudies-literature