Maternal gestational weight gain and DNA methylation in young women: Application of life course mediation methods

Jonathan Y. Huang*, David S. Siscovick, Hagit Hochner, Yechiel Friedlander, Daniel A. Enquobahrie

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

Aim: To investigate the role of maternal gestational weight gain (GWG) and prepregnancy BMI on programming offspring DNA methylation. Methods: Among 589 adult (age = 32) women participants of the Jerusalem Perinatal Study, we quantified DNA methylation in five candidate genes. We used inverse probability-weighting and parametric g-formula to estimate direct effects of maternal prepregnancy BMI and GWG on methylation. Results: Higher maternal GWG, but not prepregnancy BMI, was inversely related to offspring ABCA1 methylation (β =-1.1% per quartile; 95% CI:-2.0,-0.3) after accounting for ancestry, parental and offspring exposures. Total and controlled direct effects were nearly identical suggesting included offspring exposures did not mediate this relationship. Results were robust to sensitivity analyses for missing data and model specification. Conclusion: We find some support for epigenetic programming and highlight strengths and limitations of these methods relative to other prevailing approaches.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1559-1571
Number of pages13
JournalEpigenomics
Volume9
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2017
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Future Medicine Ltd.

Keywords

  • ABCA1
  • DNA methylation
  • DOHaD
  • candidate gene
  • gestational weight gain
  • intermediate confounding
  • marginal structural model
  • parametric g-formula

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