Association of cord blood methylation with neonatal leptin: an epigenome wide association study

This is a study of 114 newborns aimed at identifying associations of cord blood methylation profiles with measures of newborn adiposity. Neonatal adiposity is a risk factor for childhood obesity. Investigating contributors to neonata adiposity is important for understanding early life obesity risk. Epigenetic changes of metabolic genes in cord blood may contribute to excessive neonatal adiposity and subsequent childhood obesity. This study aims to evaluate the association of cord blood DNA methylation patterns with markers of neonatal adiposity A cross-sectional study was performed on a multiethnic cohort of 114 full term neonates born to mothers without gestational diabetes at a university hospital. Cord blood was assayed for leptin and for epigenome-wide DNA methylation profiles via the Illumina 450K platform. Neonatal body composition was measured by air displacement plethysmography. Multivariate linear regression was used to analyze associations between individual CpG sites as well as differentially methylated regions in cord blood DNA and measures of neonatal adiposity. False discovery rate was estimated to account for multiple comparisons.