Grant Abstract: Cumulative Effects of Prenatal Stress and Chemical Exposures on Child Development

Grant Number: 5UH3OD023272-05
PI Name: Schantz
Project Title: Cumulative Effects of Prenatal Stress and Chemical Exposures on Child Development

Abstract: This Administrative Supplement will contribute important findings related to dietary predictors of newborn outcomes in the Cumulative Effects of Prenatal Stress and Chemical Exposures on Child Development (ECHO.CA.IL, NIH 5UH3OD023272) parent study. ECHO.CA.IL is co-led by researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the University of California, San Francisco and is a part of the nation-wide Environmental influences of Child Health Outcomes Program (ECHO). The mission of the ECHO program is to enhance the health of children for generations to come, and a critical goal of ECHO.CA.IL is to use innovative methods to address gaps in our knowledge of the impacts of prenatal exposures to ubiquitous endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDC) and chronic maternal stress (as well as the interaction of these) on birth outcomes and child development. The proposed Supplement aims align with both the parent study and with two of the five target health-related goals in the ECHO program: (1) pre-, peri-, and postnatal outcomes, and (2) positive health. The proposed research will utilize data from the Illinois Kids Development Study (I-KIDS), which is the prospective pregnancy cohort being recruited at the University of Illinois. I-KIDS, enrolls women in the first trimester of pregnancy and longitudinally follows mothers and their children during pregnancy and throughout childhood. In addition to evaluating the impacts of EDCs and maternal stress on child outcomes, we also have a strong interest in assessing diet in I-KIDS mothers to understand whether diet could buffer the negative effects of EDCs and stress during pregnancy. To that end, a novel preliminary finding from I-KIDS mothers and babies demonstrates that high maternal diet quality may mitigate the negative effects of one class of EDCs (parabens) on birth outcomes, suggesting that maternal diet may protect pregnant women and their infants from the deleterious effects of EDCs. However, while almost all (99%) of pregnant women in our cohort consume some type of vitamin/mineral supplement and 97% consume a prenatal supplement, we have not investigated how supplements contribute to pregnancy outcomes in our cohort, or whether certain patterns of supplement intake modify relationships between EDCs and birth outcomes. Therefore, the overarching goal of the current research will be to use an innovative statistical approach developed to deal with complex mixtures of environmental chemicals (weighted quantile sum regression) to 1) evaluate associations between patterns of micronutrient intake from supplements in pregnancy and birth outcomes (birth weight, length, head circumference, gestational age at birth), and 2) understand how these patterns of micronutrient intakes from supplements interact with maternal diet quality and EDC exposures to influence birth outcomes.

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