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. 2020 May;87(6):1081-1085.
doi: 10.1038/s41390-019-0594-2. Epub 2019 Oct 2.

Prenatal second-hand smoke exposure and newborn telomere length

Bingqing Liu  1 , Lulu Song  1 , Lina Zhang  1 , Mingyang Wu  1 , Lulin Wang  1 , Zhongqiang Cao  2 , Chao Xiong  2 , Bin Zhang  2 , Yuanyuan Li  3 , Wei Xia  3 , Shunqing Xu  3 , Youjie Wang  4
Affiliations

Prenatal second-hand smoke exposure and newborn telomere length

Bingqing Liu et al. Pediatr Res. 2020 May.

Abstract

Background: Cigarette smoking is associated with shorter telomere lengths in adults, but evidence on the effect of prenatal tobacco exposure is limited. We aimed to investigate the association between prenatal second-hand smoke exposure and newborn telomere length.

Methods: We recruited 762 mother-newborn pairs from Wuhan Children's Hospital (Wuhan Maternal and Child Healthcare Hospital) between November 2013 and March 2015. Information on second-hand smoke exposure was obtained via questionnaires. Relative telomere length was measured in DNA extracted from umbilical cord blood. We used linear regression to assess the associations between prenatal second-hand smoke exposure and newborn telomere length.

Results: In the fully adjusted model, prenatal second-hand smoke exposure was associated with 9.7% shorter newborn telomere length (percent difference: -9.7%; 95% confidence interval (CI): -15.0, -4.0). The estimate for boys was lower (percent difference: -10.9%; 95% CI: -18.6, -2.5) than that for girls (percent difference: -8.5%; 95% CI: -15.8, -0.5), but the interaction term between newborn sex and prenatal second-hand smoke was not significant (P = 0.751).

Conclusions: This study demonstrated that prenatal second-hand smoke exposure may be a preventable risk factor for accelerated biological aging in the intrauterine stage, and further suggested possible sex differences in the susceptibility to prenatal second-hand smoke.

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