New research by the University of the Basque Country explored the characteristics and behaviors of women during their pregnancy. The study found that maternal obesity may impact fetal development.
As published in Communications Biology, the authors focused on placental DNA methylation and incldued more than 2,600 mother-child pairs from Australia, Europe, and North America.
It is the largest EWAS meta-analysis of placental DNAm to date. Researchers analyzed 2631 mother-child pairs across 10 PACE cohorts in Europe, the Americas, and Australia.
They found 27 CpGs that were correlated with maternal ppBMI, and some of them showed as much as a 2% decrease in DNAm for every 10 units increase in BMI.
“Our findings suggest that placental DNAm could be one of the mechanisms by which maternal obesity is associated with metabolic health outcomes in newborns and children, although further studies will be needed in order to corroborate these findings.”
