A Trial for Association between Oxidative Stress in Midterm Pregnancy and Postnatal Growth during the First Year of Life / 한국역학회지

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVES: We aims to construct Infant Growth Cohort for evaluating whether oxidative stress in midterm pregnancy has an adverse effect on postnatal growth. METHODS AND MATERIALS From September 2001 to April 2004, we constructed an Ewha Infant Growth Cohort connected with the Ewha Pregnant Women Cohort. We excluded mother-and-child pairs in which the mother had experienced hypertension or diabetes during pregnancy and had multiple births for this study, which gave us 233 mother-and-child pairs for analysis. We measured maternal serum homocysteine and urinary 8-hydroxyguanosine (8-OHdG) and malondialdehyde (MDA) at 24~28 weeks of pregnancy, and infant weights at birth and at 6 and 12 months postnatally. We applied repeated measures ANOVA with PROC MIXED to assess the significance of differences. RESULTS: We followed 64 and 85 infants at 6 and 12 months respectively. The mean body weights were 3146.4 g at birth, 8229.7 g at 6 months, and 1006.47 g at 12 months. The mean birth weight of infants was lower in mothers with higher homocysteine levels (third and fourth quartiles), but body weights from the first- and fourth-quartile groups of maternal homocysteine levels were lower than the others even though it was not statistically significant. Body weights at birth and at 6 months in third- and fourth-quartile groups of 8-OHdG levels were lower than the others. The body weights in the fourth quartile MDA group were significantly lower than the others at all time points. CONCLUSIONS: Maternal oxidative stress in midterm pregnancy may cause postnatal growth retardation. But, there were high rate of follow up loss and various measurement errors. Therefore, we need to have efforts for compete follow up and valid and reliable measurements.