Abstract
BackgroundEvidence suggests that the hormonal milieu of pregnancy is an important determinant of subsequent cancer and other chronic diseases in both the mother and the offspring. Many of the existing maternity and birth cohorts include specimens drawn only once during pregnancy. How well a single blood specimen collected during a pregnancy characterizes exposure to these hormones throughout gestation, and also in subsequent pregnancies, is not well understood.MethodsWe used serial serum samples from 71 pregnant women (25 primiparous, 25 multiparous, and 21 with two consecutive pregnancies) with natural, complication-free pregnancies and a healthy offspring at term who participated in a population-based screening trial for congenital infections in Finland between January 1st, 1988 and June 30, 1989 and provided a blood sample in each trimester.ResultsHormone levels were more strongly correlated between consecutive trimesters of a pregnancy than between the 1st and 3rd trimester (e.g., estradiol, rT1 vs. T2 = 0.51 and rT2 vs. T3 = 0.60, p < 0.01; rT1 vs. T3 = 0.32, p < 0.05). Concentrations of sRANKL remained stable throughout gestation, whereas estradiol, estrone, progesterone, testosterone, prolactin, and osteoprotegerin increased throughout pregnancy. First trimester hormone concentrations explained less of the variation in the third trimester on their own than second trimester hormone levels (e.g. estradiol R2T1 = 16 % and R2T2 = 42 %). Addition of maternal (e.g., smoking) and/or child characteristics (e.g., sex) improved the accuracy of the 3rd trimester estimates for some of the hormones.ConclusionsOne hormone measurement in early pregnancy, in conjunction with maternal and fetal characteristics, permits estimation of 3rd trimester hormone concentrations. Therefore, single hormone measurements available from maternity cohorts are suitable to quantify hormone exposure during pregnancy. To our knowledge, we provide the first data on correlations between hormone concentrations both across trimesters of a single pregnancy, as well as between two subsequent pregnancies.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12884-016-0937-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Evidence suggests that the hormonal milieu of pregnancy is an important determinant of subsequent cancer and other chronic diseases in both the mother and the offspring
We provide the first data on correlations between hormone concentrations both across trimesters of a single pregnancy, as well as between two subsequent pregnancies
Hormones measured in early pregnancy, during which fetal organogenesis takes place, may be important when neurodevelopmental conditions in the offspring are of interest, whereas hormone concentrations during late pregnancy may be relevant in relation to maternal risk of breast and ovarian cancers, given evidence that complete pregnancies are associated with these malignancies [3, 4]
Summary
Evidence suggests that the hormonal milieu of pregnancy is an important determinant of subsequent cancer and other chronic diseases in both the mother and the offspring. The hormonal milieu of pregnancy may be an important determinant of subsequent cancer and other chronic diseases both in the mother and the offspring [1, 2]. Maternity and birth cohorts have been established to study associations between pregnancy and early-life exposures with health and disease outcomes in the mother and/or the offspring. Many of the existing cohorts include specimens drawn once during the first half of pregnancy [5,6,7,8,9], with few collections obtaining a blood sample later in pregnancy [10, 11]. For many outcomes (e.g., chronic diseases in the offspring in adulthood), a large study population is necessary as cohort members must be followed as long as decades to accumulate a sufficient number of cases for an investigation
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