Work conducted andor published during 2007 have addressed several general areas: 1) topics relevant to the Barker hypothesis (ie developmental origins of health and disease). In particular, this year we investigated various aspects of fetal growth and blood pressure at age 7, as well as in-utero exposure to tobacco smoke and subsequent age at menarche 2) the association between birthmarks noted at birth and the development of cancer during childhood; 3) maternal serum concentrations of various inflammatory mediators and subsequent pregnancy outcome 4) risk factors for preeclampsia? ? Papers published in topic 1 indicated that reduced growth in the first trimester as determined by sonography was associated with increased birthweight, ponderal index and skinfold thickness; reduced growth in the second trimester was associated with increased arm-fat percentage, and reduced third trimester growth was associated with reduced birthweight and ponderal index. This paper was based on the NICHD-Scandinavian Fetal Growth study, and demonstrated that birthweight in not a valid indicator of fetal growth restriction occurring before the third trimester. A second paper demonstrated that the association between birthweight and 7-year blood pressure differed significantly between white and African-American children. Since nearly all of the work on the developmental origins of health and disease have been done in populations of European descent, this results suggests mechanisms may differ in different ethnic groups. A third paper evaluated postnatal growth as successive change in z-score over postnatal time. This paper concluded that crossing growth percentiles in an upward direction is associated with increased blood pressure at age 7, regardless of either birthweight or when during the first 7 years those percentiles were crossed. The age at menarche work demonstrated that girls exposed in utero to tobacco smoke experienced slightly later age at menarche than unexposed girls, in contrast to previous findings. ? ? Results published this year on topic 2 indicated that birthmarks noted early in life were associated with an increased risk of cancer during childhood, which was only slightly attenuated with cases diagnosed early in life were excluded. This increase was not specific to any particular type of cancer. ? ? Results from topic 3 indicated that elevated levels of the chemokine ENA-78 preceded the occurrence of miscarriage, but that levels of IL-8, MIP-1945;, MIP-1946;, MCP-1 and RANTES were not associated with this outcome. In addition, among cytokines, thrombopoietin was associated with miscarriage.? ? Results from topic 4 demonstrated a monotonic increase in the risk of both mild and severe preeclampsia with increasing body mass index, as well as a monotonic increase in mild and severe isolated hypertension. In fact, overweight was a stronger risk factor for severe than mild preeclampsia and hypertension. Finally, pilot work demonstrated the stability of serum Vitamin D in long-term storage.
Showing the most recent 10 out of 30 publications
