ArticleClinical epigenetics2022
The mediating effect of DNA methylation in the association between maternal sleep during pregnancy and offspring adiposity status: a prospective cohort study.
Article in Clinical epigenetics, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sleep During Pregnancy and Offspring Outcomes From Infancy to Childhood: A Systematic Review.Biopsychosocial science and medicine · 2025Pooled it
- Maternal Sleep Quality and Early-Life Epigenetic Programming of Bone-Related Genes in Neonatal Cord Blood: Findings from the PERSIAN Birth Cohort, Isfahan.Calcified tissue international · 2026Article
- Review
- Mediation analysis in longitudinal study with high-dimensional methylation mediators.Briefings in bioinformatics · 2024Article
- The Importance of Sleep in Overcoming Childhood Obesity and Reshaping Epigenetics.Biomedicines · 2024Review
- Mediating effects of DNA methylation in the association between sleep quality and infertility among women of childbearing age.BMC public health · 2023Article
- Early-to-mid pregnancy sleep and circadian markers in relation to birth outcomes: An epigenetics pilot study.Chronobiology international · 2023Article
- Effects of prenatal and postnatal melatonin supplementation on overall performance, male reproductive performance, and testicular hemodynamics in beef cattle.Journal of animal science · 2023Article
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8 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundChildhood overweight/obesity is a global public health concern. It is important to identify its early-life risk factors. Maternal poor sleep is common in late pregnancy, and previous studies indicated that poor sleep may influence the offspring's adiposity status. However, very few studies in humans investigated the effect of the different sleep parameters (sleep quantity, quality, and timing) on the offspring's adiposity indicators, and long-term studies are even more scarce. In addition, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. The present study therefore aimed to examine the association between the three maternal sleep dimensions in the late pregnancy and the offspring adiposity indicators and to explore the potential mediating effect of the cord blood DNA methylation in the above association.
methodsIncluded participants in the current study were 2211 healthy pregnant women with singleton gestation from the Shanghai Birth Cohort (SBC) and Shanghai Sleep Birth Cohort (SSBC). Maternal nighttime sleep duration, quality, and midpoint (an indicator of circadian rhythm) were assessed by the same instrument in both cohorts during late pregnancy, and the offspring's body mass index (BMI) and subcutaneous fat (SF) were measured at 2 years old. Additionally, in 231 SSBC samples, the genome-wide DNA methylation levels were measured using the Illumina Infinium Methylation EPIC BeadChip. The multivariate linear regression was used to determine the associations between the maternal sleep parameters and the offspring adiposity indicators. The epigenome-wide association study was conducted to identify the maternal sleep-related CpG sites. The mediation analysis was performed to evaluate the potential intermediate role of DNA methylation in the association between maternal sleep and offspring adiposity indicators.
resultsThe mean maternal nighttime sleep duration and the sleep midpoint for combined cohorts were 9.24 ± 1.13 h and 3.02 ± 0.82, respectively, and 24.5% of pregnant women experienced poor sleep quality in late pregnancy. After adjusting for the covariates, the maternal later sleep midpoint was associated with the increased SF in offspring (Coef. = 0.62, 95% CI 0.37-0.87, p < 0.001) at 2 years old. However, no significant associations of the nighttime sleep duration or sleep quality with the offspring adiposity indicators were found. In the SSBC sample, 45 differential methylated probes (DMPs) were associated with the maternal sleep midpoint, and then, we observed 10 and 3 DMPs that were also associated with the offspring's SF and BMI at 2 years, of which cg04351668 (MARCH9) and cg12232388 significantly mediated the relationship of sleep midpoint and SF and cg12232388 and cg12225226 mediated the sleep midpoint-BMI association, respectively.
conclusionsMaternal later sleep timing in late pregnancy was associated with higher childhood adiposity in the offspring. Cord blood DNA methylation may play a mediation role in that relationship.
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