Mom's smoking alters fetal DNA

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2016-03/cp-msa032416.php

Public Release: 31-Mar-2016
Mom's smoking alters fetal DNA
Cell Press

A study of over 6,000 mothers and their newborn children--one of the largest studies of its kind--solidifies the evidence that smoking cigarettes while pregnant chemically modifies a fetus' DNA, mirroring patterns seen in adult smokers. The researchers also identify new development-related genes affected by smoking. The work, published March 31 in the American Journal of Human Genetics, suggests a potential explanation for the link between smoking during pregnancy and health complications in children.

"I find it kind of amazing when we see these epigenetic signals in newborns, from in utero exposure, lighting up the same genes as an adult's own cigarette smoking. There's a lot of overlap," says co-senior author Stephanie London, an epidemiologist and physician at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health. "This is a blood-borne exposure to smoking--the fetus isn't breathing it, but many of the same things are going to be passing through the placenta."

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London and her colleagues found that this collection of genes related to lung and nervous system development, smoking-related cancers, birth defects such as cleft lip and palate, and more. "Many signals tied into developmental pathways," says Bonnie Joubert, an epidemiologist at the NIEHS and a co-first author on the paper. In a separate analysis, many of these DNA modifications were still apparent in older children whose mothers had smoked during pregnancy.

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