Maternal methyl nutrients, obesity programming, and neonatal anthropometric outcomes
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Maternal folate, riboflavin, betaine, choline, and vitamins B-6 and B-12 (B-12) concentrations, also known as methyl nutrients, have an interrelated role in fetal growth and DNA methylation. To date, the relationship between individual maternal methyl nutrient concentrations and neonatal anthropometric outcomes have shown conflicting results, while the interrelationship of maternal methyl nutrient concentrations and their association with DNA methylation levels of fetal growth and obesity-related genes in the offspring is unknown. The overall goal of my thesis was to provide novel evidence of the interrelationship of maternal methyl nutrients during early pregnancy i.e., <20 weeks of gestation and their association with neonatal anthropometric outcomes and fetal growth and obesity programming in Canadian mother-offspring dyads. To address this goal, firstly, the relationship between concentrations of betaine, a methyl donor nutrient, and total homocysteine (tHcy), an intermediate metabolite of methylation reactions, was tested in 723 pregnant women at early pregnancy. Betaine was inversely associated with tHcy (β=-0.21µmol/L; 95%CI -0.34, -0.07µmol/L). Furthermore, the relationship between maternal methyl nutrient patterns and neonatal anthropometric outcomes was explored. Methyl nutrient patterns were mainly characterized by maternal B-12 biomarkers and betaine. Only second-trimester B-12 pattern was inversely associated with head circumference (HC) (β=-0.13cm; 95%CI -0.24, -0.03cm) and HC z-score (β=-0.09; 95%CI -0.09, -0.01). Lastly, whether DNA methylation levels of CpG sites associated with IGF-2, HIF-3α, RXRA, LEP, LEP-R, DNMT-1, DNMT-3A, and DNMT-3B genes, measured in infants, differed by maternal red blood cell (RBC) folate concentration ≤1360 nmol/L and RBC folate >1360 nmol/L was tested, and whether these CpG sites were associated with maternal methyl nutrient patterns. Infant DNA methylation levels did not significantly differ by maternal folate concentration and were not significantly associated with maternal methyl nutrient patterns. In summary, these results indicated that betaine and total B-12 were the main drivers of maternal methyl nutrients patterns in these folate-replete populations. However, the lack of association between maternal methyl nutrient patterns with neonatal anthropometric outcomes and DNA methylation levels of fetal growth and obesity-related genes in infants suggests the need for a better understanding of the role of these nutrients in fetal programming and growth.
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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 | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 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".