Meconium: A Novel Biomarker of In Utero Exposure to Acetaminophen and Caffeine
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background/Aim: Epidemiology relies on cord blood concentrations to estimate in utero exposure to environmental chemicals, but collection can be hampered by delivery complications or timing. Meconium is a non-invasive biological matrix that accumulates over the last two trimesters of pregnancy and can be collected outside the stressful environment of the delivery room. We assessed whether meconium concentrations of acetaminophen and caffeine were associated with maternal intake of these compounds during pregnancy in the GESTation and Environment (GESTE) study, a longitudinal birth cohort in Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada. Methods: We recruited pregnant women (n=238) during the first trimester and assessed maternal intake of acetaminophen during pregnancy (yes/no) via questionnaire. Clinical files from the hospital medical database and medical charts were used to determine administration of acetaminophen during labor (yes/no) and maternal coffee intake (yes/no) during pregnancy. We measured concentrations of acetaminophen and caffeine in meconium using ultra performance liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry and log-transformed them to achieve a normal distribution. We used multivariable linear regression analyses adjusted for pre-pregnancy BMI to determine the association between maternal intake of acetaminophen during labor/delivery and meconium levels. In our analysis for caffeine we also adjusted for gestational age to account for duration of exposure. Results: Acetaminophen administration during labor was associated with a significant increase in meconium acetaminophen concentration (µno=2.30 ng/g, µyes=4.15 ng/g; p=0.0002), accounting for acetaminophen intake during pregnancy. Acetaminophen intake during pregnancy was marginally associated with meconium concentrations (µno=2.51 ng/g, µyes=3.83 ng/g; p=0.10), adjusting for administration at delivery. Maternal report of caffeine intake during pregnancy was associated with a significant increase in meconium caffeine concentrations (µno=5.46 ng/g, µyes=6.33 ng/g; p<0.0001). Conclusions: Maternal acetaminophen and caffeine intake is associated with concentrations in meconium, suggesting that meconium can be used to assess in utero exposure. This method may be extended to environmental chemicals.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".