Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jun 16;11(1):12706.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-92239-3.

Associations of maternal and infant metabolomes with immune maturation and allergy development at 12 months in the Swedish NICE-cohort

Olle Hartvigsson  1 , Malin Barman  2   3 , Hardis Rabe  4 , Anna Sandin  5 , Agnes E Wold  4 , Carl Brunius  2 , Ann-Sofie Sandberg  2
Affiliations

Associations of maternal and infant metabolomes with immune maturation and allergy development at 12 months in the Swedish NICE-cohort

Olle Hartvigsson et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Allergic diseases are the most common chronic diseases in childrenin the Western world, but little is know about what factors influence immune maturation and allergy development. We therefore aimed to associate infant and maternal metabolomes to T- and B-cell subpopulations and allergy diagnosis. We performed liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry based untargeted metabolomics on blood plasma from mothers (third trimester, n = 605; delivery, n = 558) and from the umbilical cord (n = 366). The measured metabolomes were associated to T- and B-cell subpopulations up to 4 months after delivery and to doctor´s diagnosed eczema, food allergy and asthma at one year of age using random forest analysis. Maternal and cord plasma at delivery could predict the number of CD24+CD38low memory B-cells (p = 0.033, n = 26 and p = 0.009, n = 22), but future allergy status could not be distinguished from any of the three measured metabolomes. Replication of previous literature findings showed hypoxanthine to be upregulated in the umbilical cord of children with subsequent asthma. This exploratory study suggests foetal immune programming occuring during pregnancy as the metabolomic profiles of mothers and infants at delivery related to infants' B-cell maturation.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overview of the number of cases and controls used in analyses. (+) indicating that three more children are added to the study due to twins being born.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Timeline of sampling and analytical flow chart of data analysis.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Agache I, Akdis CA. Precision medicine and phenotypes, endotypes, genotypes, regiotypes, and theratypes of allergic diseases. J. Clin. Investig. 2019;129:1–12. doi: 10.1172/JCI124611. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Larché M, Akdis CA, Valenta R. Immunological mechanisms of allergen-specific immunotherapy. Nat. Rev. Immunol. 2006;6:761–771. doi: 10.1038/nri1934. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Billingham RE, Brent L, Medawar PB. ‘Actively acquired tolerance’of foreign cells. Nature. 1953;172:603–606. doi: 10.1038/172603a0. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Rackaityte E, Halkias J. Mechanisms of fetal T cell tolerance and immune regulation. Front. Immunol. 2020;11:588. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2020.00588. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lobach DF, Haynes BF. Ontogeny of the human thymus during fetal development. J. Clin. Immunol. 1987;7:81–97. doi: 10.1007/BF00916002. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types