TY - JOUR

T1 - Vertical Transfer of Metabolites Detectable from Newborn’s Dried Blood Spot Samples Using UPLC-MS

T2 - A Chemometric Study

AU - Olarini, Alessandra

AU - Ernst, Madeleine

AU - Gürdeniz, Gözde

AU - Kim, Min

AU - Brustad, Nicklas

AU - Bønnelykke, Klaus

AU - Cohen, Arieh

AU - Hougaard, David

AU - Lasky-Su, Jessica

AU - Bisgaard, Hans

AU - Chawes, Bo

AU - Rasmussen, Morten Arendt

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - The pregnancy period and first days of a newborn’s life is an important time window to ensure a healthy development of the baby. This is also the time when the mother and her baby are exposed to the same environmental conditions and intake of nutrients, which can be determined by assessing the blood metabolome. For this purpose, dried blood spots (DBS) of newborns are a valuable sampling technique to characterize what happens during this important mother-child time window. We used metabolomics profiles from DBS of newborns (age 2–3 days) and maternal plasma samples at gestation week 24 and postpartum week 1 from n = 664 mother-child pairs of the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood 2010 (COPSAC2010) cohort, to study the vertical mother-child transfer of metabolites. Further, we investigated how persistent the metabolites are from the newborn and up to 6 months, 18 months, and 6 years of age. Two hundred seventy two metabolites from UPLC-MS (Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry) analysis of DBS and maternal plasma were analyzed using correlation analysis. A total of 11 metabolites exhibited evidence of transfer (R > 0.3), including tryptophan betaine, ergothioneine, cotinine, theobromine, paraxanthine, and N6-methyllysine. Of these, 7 were also found to show persistence in their levels in the child from birth to age 6 years. In conclusion, this study documents vertical transfer of environmental and food-derived metabolites from mother to child and tracking of those metabolites through childhood, which may be of importance for the child’s later health and disease.

AB - The pregnancy period and first days of a newborn’s life is an important time window to ensure a healthy development of the baby. This is also the time when the mother and her baby are exposed to the same environmental conditions and intake of nutrients, which can be determined by assessing the blood metabolome. For this purpose, dried blood spots (DBS) of newborns are a valuable sampling technique to characterize what happens during this important mother-child time window. We used metabolomics profiles from DBS of newborns (age 2–3 days) and maternal plasma samples at gestation week 24 and postpartum week 1 from n = 664 mother-child pairs of the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood 2010 (COPSAC2010) cohort, to study the vertical mother-child transfer of metabolites. Further, we investigated how persistent the metabolites are from the newborn and up to 6 months, 18 months, and 6 years of age. Two hundred seventy two metabolites from UPLC-MS (Ultra Performance Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry) analysis of DBS and maternal plasma were analyzed using correlation analysis. A total of 11 metabolites exhibited evidence of transfer (R > 0.3), including tryptophan betaine, ergothioneine, cotinine, theobromine, paraxanthine, and N6-methyllysine. Of these, 7 were also found to show persistence in their levels in the child from birth to age 6 years. In conclusion, this study documents vertical transfer of environmental and food-derived metabolites from mother to child and tracking of those metabolites through childhood, which may be of importance for the child’s later health and disease.

KW - Children

KW - DBS

KW - Metabolomics

KW - Pregnancy

KW - Transfer

U2 - 10.3390/metabo12020094

DO - 10.3390/metabo12020094

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 35208170

AN - SCOPUS:85124166007

VL - 12

JO - Metabolites

JF - Metabolites

SN - 2218-1989

IS - 2

M1 - 94

ER -