ABSTRACT
Emerging evidence indicates that maternal medical risk during pregnancy, such as gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), preeclampsia, and obesity, predisposes the offspring to suboptimal development. However, the underlying biological/epigenetic mechanism in utero is still unknown. The current pilot study (N = 50) compared the levels of global methylation in the placenta and umbilical cord blood among women with and without each risk condition (GDM, preeclampsia, and obesity) and explored whether the levels of global methylation were associated with fetal/infant growth. Results show that global methylation levels in the placenta were lower in patients with gestational diabetes (P = .003) and preeclampsia (P = .05) but higher with obesity (P = .01). Suggestive negative associations were found between global methylation level in the placenta and infant body length and head circumference. While preliminary, it is possible that the placenta tissue, but not umbilical cord blood, may be epigenetically programmed by maternal GDM, preeclampsia, and obesity to carry out its own specific functions that influence fetal growth.
Subject(s)
DNA Methylation , Diabetes, Gestational/genetics , Fetal Blood/chemistry , Fetal Development/genetics , Obesity/genetics , Placenta/chemistry , Pre-Eclampsia/genetics , Adolescent , Adult , Birth Weight , Cephalometry , Diabetes, Gestational/diagnosis , Epigenesis, Genetic , Female , Head/anatomy & histology , Humans , Infant, Newborn , Male , Obesity/diagnosis , Pilot Projects , Pre-Eclampsia/diagnosis , Pregnancy , Young AdultABSTRACT
In this plenary paper, we present a review of language research in children with cochlear implants along with an outline of a 5-year project designed to examine the lexical access for production and recognition. The project will use auditory priming, picture naming with auditory or visual interfering stimuli (Picture-Word Interference and Picture-Picture Interference, respectively) and eye tracking paradigms to examine the roles of semantic and various phonological factors. Preliminary data are presented from auditory priming, picture-word interference and picture-picture interference tasks. The emergence of group difference is briefly discussed.
