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Meta-Analysis
. 2018 Jan;10(1):27-42.
doi: 10.2217/epi-2017-0095. Epub 2017 Nov 27.

Maternal alcohol consumption and offspring DNA methylation: findings from six general population-based birth cohorts

Gemma C Sharp  1   2   3 , Ryan Arathimos  1   2 , Sarah E Reese  4 , Christian M Page  5   6 , Janine Felix  7   8   9 , Leanne K Küpers  1   2   10 , Sheryl L Rifas-Shiman  11 , Chunyu Liu  12   13   14 ; Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology plus (CHARGE +) methylation alcohol working group; Kimberley Burrows  1   2 , Shanshan Zhao  4 , Maria C Magnus  1   2   5 , Liesbeth Duijts  7   15   16 , Eva Corpeleijn  10 , Dawn L DeMeo  17 , Augusto Litonjua  17 , Andrea Baccarelli  18 , Marie-France Hivert  11   19 , Emily Oken  11 , Harold Snieder  10 , Vincent Jaddoe  7   8   9 , Wenche Nystad  5 , Stephanie J London  4 , Caroline L Relton  1   2 , Luisa Zuccolo  1   2
Affiliations
Meta-Analysis

Maternal alcohol consumption and offspring DNA methylation: findings from six general population-based birth cohorts

Gemma C Sharp et al. Epigenomics. 2018 Jan.

Abstract

Aim: Alcohol consumption during pregnancy is sometimes associated with adverse outcomes in offspring, potentially mediated by epigenetic modifications. We aimed to investigate genome-wide DNA methylation in cord blood of newborns exposed to alcohol in utero.

Materials & methods: We meta-analyzed information from six population-based birth cohorts within the Pregnancy and Childhood Epigenetics consortium.

Results: We found no strong evidence of association at either individual CpGs or across larger regions of the genome.

Conclusion: Our findings suggest no association between maternal alcohol consumption and offspring cord blood DNA methylation. This is in stark contrast to the multiple strong associations previous studies have found for maternal smoking, which is similarly socially patterned. However, it is possible that a combination of a larger sample size, higher doses, different timings of exposure, exploration of a different tissue and a more global assessment of genomic DNA methylation might show evidence of association.

Keywords: DNA methylation; PACE consortium; alcohol; cord blood; epidemiology; epigenetics; meta-analysis; pregnancy.

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Conflict of interest statement

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The ALSPAC cohort was supported by the Wellcome Trust (WT088806). The Project Viva cohort is funded by NIH grants R01 HL111108, R01 NR013945, and R01 HD034568. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Figures

<b>Figure 1.</b>
Figure 1.. Manhattan plot of sustained alcohol consumption (without adjustment for cell counts).
<b>Figure 2.</b>
Figure 2.. A heatmap to illustrate the direction and strength of association between all investigated alcohol exposures and offspring cord blood DNA methylation. Plotted CpGs are the top 50 CpGs with the smallest p-values in the sustained alcohol consumption single-site EWAS (without adjustment for estimated cell proportions). “Adjusted” denotes models that were adjusted for estimated cell proportions.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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