ArticleThe Science of the total environment2024
Prenatal metal exposures and childhood gut microbial signatures are associated with depression score in late childhood.
Article in The Science of the total environment, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Review
- An Exploration of Machine Learning Methods in Human Biomonitoring.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2026Review
- Associations between prenatal metal mixtures and allergic symptoms in childhood.The Science of the total environment · 2025Article
- Nutritional Modulation of the Gut Microbiome in Relation to Prenatal Lead-Induced Neurotoxicity: A Review.Nutrients · 2025Review
- Prenatal and childhood exposures to heavy metals and their associations with child cognition, motor skills, behaviour and mental health.Essays in biochemistry · 2025Review
- Primary tumor microbiomes predict distant metastasis of colorectal cancer.NPJ precision oncology · 2025Article
- Social and Environmental Correlates of Childhood Obesity Among Southern California Communities.Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.) · 2025Article
- Zinc and Cobalt exposure influencebioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Food insecurity modifies the association between the gut microbiome and the risk of cognitive impairment in adults.npj aging · 2025Article
- Article
- Association between Exposure to Metals during Pregnancy, Childhood Gut Microbiome, and Risk of Intestinal Inflammation in Late Childhood.Environment & health (Washington, D.C.) · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundChildhood depression is a major public health issue worldwide. Previous studies have linked both prenatal metal exposures and the gut microbiome to depression in children. However, few, if any, have studied their interacting effect in specific subgroups of children.
objectivesUsing an interpretable machine-learning method, this study investigates whether children with specific combinations of prenatal metals and childhood microbial signatures (cliques or groups of metals and microbes) were more likely to have higher depression scores at 9-11 years of age.
methodsWe leveraged data from a well-characterized pediatric longitudinal birth cohort in Mexico City and its microbiome substudy (n = 112). Eleven metal exposures were measured in maternal whole blood samples in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. The gut microbial abundances were measured at 9-11-year-olds using shotgun metagenomic sequencing. Depression symptoms were assessed using the Child Depression Index (CDI) t-scores at 9-11 years of age. We used Microbial and Chemical Exposure Analysis (MiCxA), which combines interpretable machine-learning into a regression framework to identify and estimate joint associations of metal-microbial cliques in specific subgroups. Analyses were adjusted for relevant covariates.
resultsWe identified a subgroup of children (11.6 % of the sample) characterized by a four-component metal-microbial clique that had a significantly high depression score (15.4 % higher than the rest) in late childhood. This metal-microbial clique consisted of high Zinc in the second trimester, low Cobalt in the third trimester, a high abundance of Bacteroides fragilis, a high abundance of Faecalibacterium prausnitzii. All combinations of cliques (two-, three-, and four-components) were significantly associated with increased log-transformed t-scored CDI (β = 0.14, 95%CI = [0.05,0.23], P < 0.01 for the four-component clique). SIGNIFICANCE: This study offers a new approach to chemical-microbial analysis and a novel demonstration that children with specific gut microbiome cliques and metal exposures during pregnancy may have a higher likelihood of elevated depression scores.
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