Prevalence of childhood wheeze and modified DNA methylation at 7 years
of age according to maternal folate levels during pregnancy in the
Hokkaido Study
Abstract
Background: recent epidemiological studies state that a high dose of
folic acid status during pregnancy increases the risk of asthma,
wheezing, and respiratory disease in childhood. As potential biological
mechanism, folate acid can modify inflammation and immune susceptibility
of offspring with some epigenetic differentiation, including DNA
methylation. This study evaluated the association between maternal
folate levels during pregnancy with childhood wheeze, and whether DNA
methylation differentiation of children in genes is related to wheezing
or not. Methods: the cohort comprised 6651 mother–child pairs who were
evaluated for an association between maternal folate level during
pregnancy and childhood wheeze at 1, 2, 4, and 7 years age, which were
assessed by the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood
questionnaire. Results: the median of maternal serum was 16.76 nmol/l,
assayed by chemiluminescent immunoassay. We found significantly
increased adjusted odds ratios of childhood wheeze at 2 years age
according to maternal folate levels, compared with lowest folate
quartile (odds ratio [95% confidence interval] = highest; 1.27
[1.03, 1.56], and second; 1.27 [1.05, 1.55]), however, no
changes were observed at 1, 4, and 7 years age. In a case-control study
of childhood wheeze due to DNA methylation at 7 years age, no
association of maternal folate levels with DNA methylation was observed.
Conclusion: our result proposes that the negative effect of maternal
folate on an infant’s wheeze did not remain until 7 years of age and no
association with maternal folate levels and DNA methylation (at the same
age) was observed.