Precision nutrition最新文献

Background: Mitochondrial dysfunction has been linked with metabolic disorders, given the central role of mitochondria in multiple crucial metabolic processes. However, little is known about how maternal metabolic conditions may affect mitochondrial function in newborns, although several other prenatal exposures have been associated with impaired mitochondrial function in either the placenta or cord blood. This study aimed to assess the association between maternal metabolic conditions and mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNA-CN, as a biomarker for mitochondrial function) in newborns.

Methods: Among 999 mother-newborn pairs from the Boston Birth Cohort, mtDNA-CN in newborn umbilical cord blood and maternal blood collected at delivery were measured by a targeted genome sequencing approach. Linear regressions were used to evaluate the association between maternal metabolic conditions (diabetes mellitus, pre-pregnancy obesity, and the combination of the two conditions) and mtDNA-CN Z-scores in cord blood. The models were initially adjusted for maternal and child demographic and lifestyle characteristics, followed by additional adjustment for maternal mtDNA-CN to explore its potential influence on the results.

Results: In this sample, 23.6% of mothers had pre-pregnancy obesity, and 13.6% had diabetes. In models examining the two conditions separately, both maternal diabetes (Beta = 0.18, 95% CI: 0.00, 0.36, p = 0.054) and obesity (Beta = 0.10, 95% CI: -0.04, 0.25, p = 0.166) were associated with increased cord blood mtDNA-CN Z scores, but neither association reached statistical significance. When examined together, newborns whose mothers had both diabetes and pre-pregnancy obesity had statistically significantly higher cord mtDNA-CN Z scores (Beta = 0.35, 95% CI: 0.08, 0.63, p = 0.012) compared to newborns whose mothers did not have the two conditions. Further adjustment for maternal blood mtDNA-CN did not substantially alter the above associations.

Conclusion: Maternal diabetes and obesity jointly were associated with higher levels of cord blood mtDNA-CN. Future studies should further assess whether cord blood mtDNA-CN explains the link between maternal metabolic conditions and offspring health outcomes.

In-utero and the first few years of life represent critical windows for immune development, and early life exposures to microbes and environmental pollutants may have a profound impact on future risk of allergic diseases. However, few studies have examined the interplay among early life exposures, immune responses, and multi-omics on allergic outcomes across the critical developmental windows. Funded by the National Institute of Health, we launched a prospective study in the Boston Birth Cohort (BBC) to investigate the impact of early-life exposure to environmental pollutants and immune response to a broad array of microbes on the development and prognosis of allergic diseases from birth up to age 18 years and their underlying molecular pathways (referred as "The BBC IDeaL study"). The objective of this paper is to describe the study rationale, hypotheses, and study design of the BBC IDeaL study. This study included a total of 990 mother-child dyads, with almost equal number of boys and girls. About 58% mothers self-identified as Black, 6% as White, 22% as Hispanic and 14% as others. These children were followed from birth onwards, with an average of 12 ± 5 years of follow-up. The incident rate for food allergy and asthma was 8% and 21%, respectively. The key strengths of this study include its prospective birth cohort design, large sample size, diverse race/ethnicity, comprehensive and high-quality exposure assessment, standardized clinical outcome ascertainment, cutting-edge immune and multi-omics assays. We anticipate that successful completion of the BBC IDeaL study will help identify important early life risk and protective factors, along with novel biomarkers for prediction or therapeutic targets. Ultimately, the expected findings may contribute to identification of high-risk newborns and can inform effective interventions during the earliest developmental windows when they may have the greatest lifelong benefit.

There is growing evidence that the plasma proteome provides insights into personal health status at different stages of life. However, limited data are available on high-throughput proteomic studies in pediatric populations, especially, using prospective birth cohorts. We launched a proteomics study in 990 children from a US predominantly urban, low-income, multi-ethnic prospective Boston Birth Cohort (BBC, referred as "BBC proteomics study"), which aimed to leverage proteomics to investigate the biological pathways underlying the link between preterm birth and child long-term cardiometabolic health. The objective of this paper is to describe the rationale, study design, proteomic assay and quality control steps for the BBC proteomics study in a subset of children with available proteomic profiling. Using the OLINK^® Explore 3072 platform, proteomic profiling was performed in cord plasma at birth and in postnatal plasma collected during early childhood. Quality control (QC) steps were performed, including calculation of coefficient of variation (CV), missingness rates per sample or per protein, principal component analyses to identify clustering and outliers, and correlation analyses among the duplicates to indicate reproducibility. A total of 2,941 proteins from eight OLINK panels were successfully measured at both time points. Almost 100% of samples passed lab-prespecified QC. Approximately 89% of proteins were detected in > 50% samples; 79.6% had intra-CV < 15% and 79.9% of had inter-CV < 30%. Four samples were identified as outliers due to high missingness rates. Our data also demonstrated that this assay had a good reproducibility with correlation coefficient (r) > 0.65 in most of the duplicates, although we also identified potential batch effects. In conclusion, our data suggests that this high-throughput proteomic profiling is feasible and reproducible in archived plasma samples, including cord blood. We anticipated that successful completion of this proteomics study will help identify novel predictive biomarkers and therapeutic targets so that high-risk newborns can be identified, and effective interventions can be initiated during the earliest developmental window when they may have the greatest life-long benefit.

Background: Precision nutrition emphasizes tailoring dietary requirements across populations and life stages. Optimal folate and vitamin B12 levels are important for normal growth and development, but data are lacking for low-income minority U.S. children during early life periods. This study aimed to describe folate, vitamin B12, homocysteine (Hcy) levels, and influencing factors to address the gaps.

Methods: Blood samples from children aged 6 months to 9 years and mothers 48-72 hours postpartum in the Boston Birth Cohort (BBC) were tested for folate, vitamin B12, and Hcy. Maternal and child characteristics, sociodemographic factors, and feeding status were obtained from a standard maternal questionnaire interview at the enrollment and follow-up, and medical records. The distribution of children's folate, vitamin B12, and Hcy were described and factors influencing these biomarkers were analyzed.

Results: A wide distribution of folate, vitamin B12, and Hcy levels was observed in this sample, with longitudinal trends consistent with National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data. Multivariate analysis showed that very preterm birth correlated with higher folate levels (adjusted β 4.236; 95% CI: 1.218, 7.253; p=0.006). Children aged 1-2 years and 3-8 years had lower folate levels compared to those <1 year (adjusted β -10.191 and -7.499 respectively; p<0.001). Vitamin B12 levels were higher in Black children (adjusted fold change 1.139; 95% CI: 1.052, 1.233; p=0.001) and those children whose mothers' B12 levels were at the highest quartile (Q4) (adjusted fold change 1.229; 95% CI: 1.094, 1.380; p=0.001). Delayed solid food introduction (> 6 months) correlated with lower children's B12 levels (adjusted fold change 0.888; 95% CI: 0.809, 0.975; p=0.013). Hcy levels were lower in Black children (adjusted fold change 0.962; 95% CI: 0.932, 0.993; p=0.018), higher in children with maternal Hcy levels in Q4 (adjusted fold change 1.081; 95% CI: 1.03, 1.135; p=0.002) and in children aged 3-8 years (adjusted fold change 1.084; 95% CI: 1.040, 1.131; p< 0.001).

Conclusions: This study revealed wide variations in plasma folate, vitamin B12, and Hcy levels among low-income minority U.S. children and identified race, maternal levels, child's age, prematurity, and timing of solid food introduction as significant correlates.

Neurodevelopmental disabilities (NDD) are a group of conditions with onset in early development period and is characterized by limitations in several functional domains. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders (ADHD), the most common NDDs, have complex etiologies and possibly multiple pathways leading up to the manifestation of these disorders. Boston Birth Cohort (BBC) is a preterm enriched birth cohort, and over the years, researchers have used the BBC dataset to study a broad spectrum of early life protective and risk factors in the context of NDDs. Broadly, some of them include: 1) nutrition (e.g. maternal folate, vitamin B12, cord folate species, selenium), 2) metabolic factors (e.g. role of maternal diabetes, obesity, branched chain amino acids and other essential amino acids), 3) lipid metabolism (e.g. maternal cholesterol), 4) immune activation and/or systematic inflammation (including maternal immune activation, inflammation of the placenta, inflammatory markers, maternal antibiotic use and acetaminophen use), and 5) other factors associated with NDDs (e.g. maternal stress, sickle cell disease). The findings from these studies are discussed in this review. BBC studies have advanced the field of NDD in the following important ways: 1) generating evidence that sheds light on new exposures, 2) furthering the existing knowledge using better methodological approaches, 3) analyzing novel mechanistic pathways on already proven relationship, and 4) advancing knowledge on the under-studied minority population in the U.S. BBC researchers are involved in ongoing efforts to characterize NDD developmental trajectories across the life stages by integrating multi-omics data (genome, epigenome, and metabolome) to gain a deeper understanding of the molecular pathways by which early life factors drive or shape the developmental trajectories of NDDs.