Ontogeny of circulating lipid metabolism in pregnancy and early childhood: a longitudinal population study
- Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, Australia
- National University of Singapore, Singapore
- Singapore Institute for Clinical Sciences, A*STAR, Singapore
- Deakin University, Australia
- Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Australia
- The Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health, Australia
- Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Australia
Abstract
Background: There is mounting evidence that in utero and early life exposures may predispose an individual to metabolic disorders in later life; and dysregulation of lipid metabolism is critical in such outcomes. However, there is limited knowledge about lipid metabolism and factors causing lipid dysregulation in early life that could result in adverse health outcomes in later life. We studied the effect of antenatal factors such as gestational age, birth weight and mode of birth on lipid metabolism at birth; changes in the circulating lipidome in the first four years of life and the effect of breastfeeding in the first year of life. From this study, we aim to generate a framework for deeper understanding into factors effecting lipid metabolism in early life, to provide early interventions for those at risk of developing metabolic disorders including cardiovascular diseases.
Methods and findings: We performed comprehensive lipid profiling of 1074 mother-child dyads in the Barwon Infant Study (BIS), a population based pre-birth cohort and measured 776 distinct lipid species across 42 lipid classes using ultra high-performance liquid chromatography (UHPLC). We measured lipids in 1032 maternal serum samples at 28 weeks' gestation, 893 cord serum samples at birth, 793, 735, and 511 plasma samples at six, twelve months, and four years, respectively. The lipidome differed between mother and newborn and changed markedly with increasing child's age. Cord serum was enriched with long chain poly-unsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFAs), and corresponding cholesteryl esters relative to the maternal serum. Alkenylphosphatidylethanolamine species containing LC-PUFAs increased with child's age, whereas the corresponding lysophospholipids and triglycerides decreased. We performed regression analyses to investigate the associations of cord serum lipid species with antenatal factors: gestational age, birth weight, mode of birth and duration of labor. Majority of the cord serum lipids were strongly associated with gestational age and birth weight, with most lipids showing opposing associations. Each mode of birth showed an independent association with cord serum lipids. Breastfeeding had a significant impact on the plasma lipidome in the first year of life, with upto 17-fold increases in a few species of alkyldiaclylglycerols at 6 months of age.
Conclusions: This study sheds light on lipid metabolism in infancy and early childhood and provide a framework to define the relationship between lipid metabolism and health outcomes in early childhood.
Funding Statement: This work was supported by the A*STAR-NHMRC joint call funding (1711624031).
Data availability
Due to the consent obtained during recruitment process, it is not possible to make all data publicly available. Access to BIS data including all data used in this paper may be requested through the BIS Steering Committee by contacting the corresponding author. Requests to access cohort data are considered on scientific and ethical grounds and, if approved, provided under collaborative research agreements. Deidentified cohort data can be provided in Stata or CSV format. All statistical methods used are referenced within the methods section. Data that is not subject to data-sharing restrictions can be found in Supplementary File 1. Additional project information, including cohort data description and access procedures, is available at the project's website https://www.barwoninfantstudy.org.au
Article and author information
Author details
Anne-Louise Ponsonby
Funding
National Health and Medical Research Council (A*STAR-NHMRC joint call funding (1711624031).)
- Peter Meikle
National Health and Medical Research Council (A*STAR-NHMRC joint call funding (1711624031).)
- Markus R Wenk
- Neerja Karnani
- Fiona Collier
- Richard Saffery
- Peter Vuillermin
- Anne-Louise Ponsonby
- David Burgner
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: The original study was granted by the Barwon Health Human Research and Ethics Committee (HREC 10/24).
Copyright
© 2022, Burugupalli et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 1,565
- views
-
- 252
- downloads
-
- 15
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Ontogeny of circulating lipid metabolism in pregnancy and early childhood: a longitudinal population study
eLife 11:e72779.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.72779
Further reading
-
- Epidemiology and Global Health
Given the rapid cross-country spread of SARS-CoV-2 and the resulting difficulty in tracking lineage spread, we investigated the potential of combining mobile service data and fine-granular metadata (such as postal codes and genomic data) to advance integrated genomic surveillance of the pandemic in the federal state of Thuringia, Germany. We sequenced over 6500 SARS-CoV-2 Alpha genomes (B.1.1.7) across 7 months within Thuringia while collecting patients’ isolation dates and postal codes. Our dataset is complemented by over 66,000 publicly available German Alpha genomes and mobile service data for Thuringia. We identified the existence and spread of nine persistent mutation variants within the Alpha lineage, seven of which formed separate phylogenetic clusters with different spreading patterns in Thuringia. The remaining two are subclusters. Mobile service data can indicate these clusters’ spread and highlight a potential sampling bias, especially of low-prevalence variants. Thereby, mobile service data can be used either retrospectively to assess surveillance coverage and efficiency from already collected data or to actively guide part of a surveillance sampling process to districts where these variants are expected to emerge. The latter concept was successfully implemented as a proof-of-concept for a mobility-guided sampling strategy in response to the surveillance of Omicron sublineage BQ.1.1. The combination of mobile service data and SARS-CoV-2 surveillance by genome sequencing is a valuable tool for more targeted and responsive surveillance.
-
- Epidemiology and Global Health
- Microbiology and Infectious Disease
Lack of data on the aetiology of livestock diseases constrains effective interventions to improve livelihoods, food security and public health. Livestock abortion is an important disease syndrome affecting productivity and public health. Several pathogens are associated with livestock abortions but across Africa surveillance data rarely include information from abortions, little is known about aetiology and impacts, and data are not available to inform interventions. This paper describes outcomes from a surveillance platform established in Tanzania spanning pastoral, agropastoral and smallholder systems to investigate causes and impacts of livestock abortion. Abortion events were reported by farmers to livestock field officers (LFO) and on to investigation teams. Events were included if the research team or LFO could attend within 72 hr. If so, samples and questionnaire data were collected to investigate (a) determinants of attribution; (b) patterns of events, including species and breed, previous abortion history, and seasonality; (c) determinants of reporting, investigation and attribution; (d) cases involving zoonotic pathogens. Between 2017–2019, 215 events in cattle (n=71), sheep (n=44), and goats (n=100) were investigated. Attribution, achieved for 19.5% of cases, was significantly affected by delays in obtaining samples. Histopathology proved less useful than PCR due to rapid deterioration of samples. Vaginal swabs provided practical and sensitive material for pathogen detection. Livestock abortion surveillance, even at a small scale, can generate valuable information on causes of disease outbreaks, reproductive losses and can identify pathogens not easily captured through other forms of livestock disease surveillance. This study demonstrated the feasibility of establishing a surveillance system, achieved through engagement of community-based field officers, establishment of practical sample collection and application of molecular diagnostic platforms.
