By analyzing the blood of a five-year-old child, you can find out whether his mother smoked during pregnancy or not. This conclusion was made by American scientists after research. Details.
The results of a study conducted at the School of Public Health. Bloomberg at Johns Hopkins University (USA) showed that the effects of harmful external influences in the prenatal period can persist for years after the birth of a child and potentially have a negative impact on his health. Scientists suggest that further research will reveal the effects of other harmful effects during pregnancy – chemicals found in plastics, pollution in drinking water, infections, and so on.
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“We have known for a long time that harmful substances often accumulate in the body – for example, traces of lead exposure can be found in the bones. But we did not know that in the blood taken for analysis, you can find traces of harmful substances that acted on the body even in the womb, ”says lead author of the study, Ph.D. Daniele Fallin, professor and head of the Department of Mental Health at the School of Public Health. Bloomberg.
Daniele Fallin and colleagues analyzed the so-called epigenetic changes. They are caused by mechanisms that control the “turning on” and “off” of genes, but do not affect DNA sequences. Two years ago, another group of scientists had already examined the cord blood of newborns and found that the presence of certain epigenetic changes called DNA methylation at 26 regions of the genome correlated with maternal smoking during pregnancy.
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In the new study, the authors went further. They looked at the blood tests of 531 preschoolers from six different regions of the United States, and asked their mothers if they smoked during pregnancy. By examining DNA methylation in the same 26 regions of the genome, the scientists found that this test was 81% accurate in showing the effects of tobacco smoke on a baby in the womb. Thus, they found that these changes can be detected even after several years.
Daniele Fallin believes that such methods can be more widely used. In the case of smoking, it is relatively easy to determine whether a mother smoked during pregnancy by interviewing herself or her relatives. Exposure to many other toxic substances is much more difficult to detect – the mother herself may not know that she has been exposed to it.
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“If traces of epigenetic changes resulting from exposure to various environmental hazards can be detected, this will allow us to learn much more about how such exposure in utero can affect human health years and even decades later,” says co-author of the study. PhD Christine Ladd-Acosta, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the T. Bloomberg.
Подробнее см. С. Ladd-Acosta «Presence of an epigenetic signature of prenatal cigarette smoke exposure in childhood», Environmental Research, vol. 144, Part A, January 2016.