ArticleThe American journal of clinical nutrition2020
Effect of maternal preconceptional and pregnancy micronutrient interventions on children's DNA methylation: Findings from the EMPHASIS study.
Article in The American journal of clinical nutrition, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 30 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Impact of Nutrition on DNA Methylation: Methodological Challenges in Understanding Cause and Effect.Nutrients · 2026Review
- DNA methylation marks associated with body composition in children from India and the Gambia: findings from the EMPHASIS study.Clinical epigenetics · 2026Article
- Effects of preconception nutrition interventions on pregnancy and birth outcomes in South Asia: a systematic review.The Lancet regional health. Southeast Asia · 2025Review
- Placental Epigenome Impacts Fetal Development: Effects of Maternal Nutrients and Gut Microbiota.Nutrients · 2024Review
- Micronutrients in early life and offspring metabolic health programming: a promising target for preventing non-communicable diseases.European journal of clinical nutrition · 2023Review
- DNA methylation of insulin signaling pathways is associated with HOMA2-IR in primary myoblasts from older adults.Skeletal muscle · 2023Article
- Early life impacts of maternal obesity: a window of opportunity to improve the health of two generations.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- DNA methylation at the suppressor of cytokine signaling 3 (SOCS3) gene influences height in childhood.Nature communications · 2023Article
- The influence of early environment and micronutrient availability on developmental epigenetic programming: lessons from the placenta.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2023Review
- DNA Methylation NearPediatric diabetes · 2023Article
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- DNA methylation signatures associated with cardiometabolic risk factors in children from India and The Gambia: results from the EMPHASIS study.Clinical epigenetics · 2022Article
- DNA methylation at a nutritionally sensitive region of theScience advances · 2021Article
- Environmental Exposures around Conception: Developmental Pathways Leading to Lifetime Disease Risk.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Review
- A Discovery that Reframes the Whole of Global Healthcare in the 21st Century: The Importance of the Imprintome.Integrative medicine (Encinitas, Calif.) · 2021Article
- Review
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Authors and funding
17 authors at 7 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundMaternal nutrition in pregnancy has been linked to offspring health in early and later life, with changes to DNA methylation (DNAm) proposed as a mediating mechanism.
objectiveWe investigated intervention-associated DNAm changes in children whose mothers participated in 2 randomized controlled trials of micronutrient supplementation before and during pregnancy, as part of the EMPHASIS (Epigenetic Mechanisms linking Preconceptional nutrition and Health Assessed in India and sub-Saharan Africa) study (ISRCTN14266771).
designWe conducted epigenome-wide association studies with blood samples from Indian (n = 698) and Gambian (n = 293) children using the Illumina EPIC array and a targeted study of selected loci not on the array. The Indian micronutrient intervention was food based, whereas the Gambian intervention was a micronutrient tablet.
resultsWe identified 6 differentially methylated CpGs in Gambians [2.5-5.0% reduction in intervention group, all false discovery rate (FDR) <5%], the majority mapping to ESM1, which also represented a strong signal in regional analysis. One CpG passed FDR <5% in the Indian cohort, but overall effect sizes were small (<1%) and did not have the characteristics of a robust signature. We also found strong evidence for enrichment of metastable epialleles among subthreshold signals in the Gambian analysis. This supports the notion that multiple methylation loci are influenced by micronutrient supplementation in the early embryo.
conclusionsMaternal preconceptional and pregnancy micronutrient supplementation may alter DNAm in children measured at 7-9 y. Multiple factors, including differences between the nature of the intervention, participants, and settings, are likely to have contributed to the lack of replication in the Indian cohort. Potential links to phenotypic outcomes will be explored in the next stage of the EMPHASIS study.
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