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Si J, Meir AY, Hong X, Wang G, Huang W, Pearson C, Adams WG, Wang X, Liang L. Maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, offspring epigenome-wide DNA methylation, and childhood obesity: findings from the Boston Birth Cohort. BMC Med 2023; 21:317. [PMID: 37612641 PMCID: PMC10463574 DOI: 10.1186/s12916-023-03003-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/07/2023] [Accepted: 07/25/2023] [Indexed: 08/25/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Maternal 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. METHODS This 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. RESULTS The 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). CONCLUSIONS This 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.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jiahui Si
- Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Anat Yaskolka Meir
- Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Xiumei Hong
- Center On the Early Life Origins of Disease, Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Guoying Wang
- Center On the Early Life Origins of Disease, Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Wanyu Huang
- Department of Civil and Systems Engineering, Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Colleen Pearson
- Department of Pediatrics, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA
| | - William G Adams
- Department of Pediatrics, Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Xiaobin Wang
- Center On the Early Life Origins of Disease, Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA.
- Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA.
| | - Liming Liang
- Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
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Pearson C, Bartell T, Wang G, Hong X, Rusk SA, Fu L, Cerda S, Bustamante-Helfrich B, Kuohung W, Yarrington C, Adams WG, Wang X. Boston Birth Cohort profile: rationale and study design. Precis Nutr 2022; 1:e00011. [PMID: 37745944 PMCID: PMC9844822 DOI: 10.1097/pn9.0000000000000011] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/09/2022] [Revised: 06/09/2022] [Accepted: 06/16/2022] [Indexed: 09/26/2023]
Abstract
In1998, the Boston Birth Cohort (BBC) was initiated at Boston Medical Center (BMC) in response to persistently high rates of preterm birth (PTB, defined as birth before 37 weeks of gestation) in the US population and the longstanding profound PTB disparity among Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). The BBC encompasses two linked study protocols: The PTB Study serves as the baseline recruitment in the BBC. It aims to address fundamental questions about the causes and consequences of PTB. The study oversamples preterm babies using a case/control study design, in which cases are defined as mothers who deliver a preterm and/or low birthweight baby (<2500 grams regardless of gestational age). Controls are enrolled at a 2:1 control/case ratio and matched by maternal age (±5 years), self-reported race and ethnicity, and date of delivery (± 7 days for case delivery). From inception, it was designed as a comprehensive gene-environmental study of PTB. As a natural extension, the Children's Health Study, under a separate but linked Institutional Review Board protocol, is a longitudinal follow-up study of the participants who were recruited at birth in the PTB Study and who continue pediatric care at BMC. This linked model allows for investigation of early life origins of pediatric and chronic disease in a prospective cohort design. The BBC is one of the largest and longest National Institutes of Health-funded prospective birth cohort studies in the United States, consisting of 8733 mother-child dyads enrolled in the PTB Study at birth, and of those, 3592 children have been enrolled in the Children's Health Study, with a median follow-up of 14.5 years. The BBC mirrors the urban, underresourced, and underrepresented BIPOC population served by BMC. A high proportion of BBC children were born prematurely and had chronic health conditions (e.g., asthma, obesity, and elevated blood pressure) in childhood. The BBC's long-term goal has been to build a large, comprehensive database (epidemiological, clinical, and multiomics) and biospecimen repository to elucidate early life origins of pediatric and chronic diseases and identify modifiable upstream factors (e.g., psychosocial, environmental, and nutritional) to improve health across the life course for BIPOC mothers and children.
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Affiliation(s)
- Colleen Pearson
- Department of Pediatrics, Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Tami Bartell
- Patrick M. Magoon Institute for Healthy Communities, Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA
| | - Guoying Wang
- Center on the Early Life Origins of Disease, Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Xiumei Hong
- Center on the Early Life Origins of Disease, Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - Serena A. Rusk
- Center on the Early Life Origins of Disease, Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA
| | - LingLing Fu
- Department of Pediatrics, Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Sandra Cerda
- Department of Pathology, Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA
| | | | - Wendy Kuohung
- Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Christina Yarrington
- Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA
| | - William G. Adams
- Department of Pediatrics, Boston University School of Medicine and Boston Medical Center, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Xiaobin Wang
- Center on the Early Life Origins of Disease, Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA
- Department of Pediatrics, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA
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