This review summarizes studies on eating disorders in pregnancy and the postpartum period that have been conducted as part of the broader Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa). Prior to the 2000s, empirical literature on eating disorders in pregnancy was sparse and consisted mostly of studies in small clinical samples. MoBa has contributed to a new era of research by making population-based and large-sample research possible. To date, MoBa has led to 19 studies on diverse questions including the prevalence, course, and risk correlates of eating disorders during pregnancy and the postpartum. The associations between eating disorder exposure and pregnancy, birth and obstetric outcomes, and maternal and offspring health and well-being, have also been areas of focus. The findings indicate that eating disorders in pregnancy are relatively common and appear to confer health risks to mother and her child related to sleep, birth outcomes, maternal nutrition, and child feeding and eating.
Background: Maternal smoking during pregnancy has been associated with risk of facial clefts in offspring, but causation has not yet been established. It is possible that the effect of maternal smoking on facial clefts is mediated through genes that are involved in nicotine dependence. Gamma-aminobutyric acid B receptor 2 (GABBR2), dopa decarboxylase (DDC), and cholinergic receptor nicotinic alpha 4 (CHRNA4) are three examples of genes that have previously shown strong associations with nicotine dependence.
Methods: We used a population-based sample of 377 case-parent trios of cleft lip with or without cleft palate (CL/P) and 762 control-parent trios from Norway (1996-2001) to investigate whether variants in GABBR2, DDC and CHRNA4 are associated with maternal first-trimester smoking and with clefting risk. We used HAPLIN (Gjessing et al. 2006), a statistical software tailored for family-based association tests, to perform haplotype-based analyses on 12 SNPs in these genes (rs10985765, rs1435252, rs3780422, rs2779562, and rs3750344 in GABBR2; rs2060762, rs3757472, rs1451371, rs3735273, and rs921451 in DDC; rs4522666 and rs1044393 in CHRNA4).
Results: When analyzed one at a time, there was little evidence of association between any of the 12 SNPs and maternal first-trimester smoking. In haplotype analyses, however, one copy of the maternal G-G-c-G-c haplotype in DDC was linked with smoking prevalence (odds ratio: 1.5; 95% confidence interval: 1.0-2.1). This same haplotype also increased the risk of isolated CL/P in offspring by 1.5-fold with one copy and 2.4-fold with two copies (Ptrend = 0.06). No statistically significant associations were detected with GABBR2 and CHRNA4.
Conclusions: Despite strong associations previously reported between nicotine dependence and variants in GABBR2, DDC and CHRNA4, these genes were poor predictors of maternal first-trimester smoking in our data. The direct association of the DDC haplotype with CL/P suggests that this haplotype may either have direct effects on clefts or it may influence clefting risks through other yet unexplored risk behavior(s).