Epigenome-wide meta-analysis of prenatal vitamin D insufficiency and cord blood DNA methylation.

View Abstract

Low maternal vitamin D concentrations during pregnancy have been associated with a range of offspring health outcomes. DNA methylation is one mechanism by which the maternal vitamin D status during pregnancy could impact offspring's health in later life. We aimed to evaluate whether maternal vitamin D insufficiency during pregnancy was conditionally associated with DNA methylation in the offspring cord blood. Maternal vitamin D insufficiency (plasma 25-hydroxy vitamin D 75 nmol/L) during pregnancy and offspring cord blood DNA methylation, assessed using Illumina Infinium 450k or Illumina EPIC Beadchip, was collected for 3738 mother-child pairs in 7 cohorts as part of the Pregnancy and Childhood Epigenetics (PACE) consortium. Associations between maternal vitamin D and offspring DNA methylation, adjusted for fetal sex, maternal smoking, maternal age, maternal pre-pregnancy or early pregnancy BMI, maternal education, gestational age at measurement of 25(OH)D, parity, and cell type composition, were estimated using robust linear regression in each cohort, and a fixed-effects meta-analysis was conducted. The prevalence of vitamin D insufficiency ranged from 44.3% to 78.5% across cohorts. Across 364,678 CpG sites, none were associated with maternal vitamin D insufficiency at an epigenome-wide significant level after correcting for multiple testing using Bonferroni correction or a less conservative Benjamini-Hochberg False Discovery Rate approach (FDR,  > 0.05). In this epigenome-wide association study, we did not find convincing evidence of a conditional association of vitamin D insufficiency with offspring DNA methylation at any measured CpG site.

Abbreviation
Epigenetics
Publication Date
2024-10-17
Volume
19
Issue
1
Page Numbers
2413815
Pubmed ID
39418282
Medium
Print-Electronic
Full Title
Epigenome-wide meta-analysis of prenatal vitamin D insufficiency and cord blood DNA methylation.
Authors
Diemer EW, Tuhkanen J, Sammallahti S, Heinonen K, Neumann A, Robinson SL, Suderman M, Jin J, Page CM, Fore R, Rifas-Shiman SL, Oken E, Perron P, Bouchard L, Hivert MF, Räikköne K, Lahti J, Yeung EH, Guan W, Mumford SL, Magnus MC, Håberg S, Nystad W, Parr CL, London SJ, Felix JF, Tiemeier H