Maternal vitamin D–related metabolome and offspring risk of asthma outcomes

Abstract

Gestational vitamin D deficiency is implicated in development of respiratory diseases in offspring, but the mechanism underlying this relationship is unknown. We sought to study the link between gestational vitamin D exposure and childhood asthma phenotypes using maternal blood metabolomics profiling. Untargeted blood metabolic profiles were acquired using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry at 1 week postpartum from 672 women in the Copenhagen Prospective Studies on Asthma in Childhood2010 (COPSAC2010) mother-child cohort and at pregnancy weeks 32 to 38 from 779 women in the Vitamin D Antenatal Asthma Reduction Trial (VDAART) mother-child cohort. In COPSAC2010, we employed multivariate models and pathway enrichment analysis to identify metabolites and pathways associated with gestational vitamin D blood levels and investigated their relationship with development of asthma phenotypes in early childhood. The findings were validated in VDAART and in cellular models. In COPSAC2010, higher vitamin D blood levels at 1 week postpartum were associated with distinct maternal metabolome perturbations with significant enrichment of the sphingomyelin pathway (P< .01). This vitamin D-related maternal metabolic profile at 1 week postpartum containing 46 metabolites was associated with decreased risk of recurrent wheeze (hazard ratio [HR]= 0.92 [95% CI 0.86-0.98], P= .01) and wheeze exacerbations (HR= 0.90 [95% CI 0.84-0.97], P= .01) at ages 0 to 3 years. The same metabolic profile was similarly associated with decreased risk of asthma/wheeze at ages 0 to 3 in VDAART (odds ratio= 0.92 [95% CI 0.85-0.99], P= .04). Human bronchial epithelial cells treated with high-dose vitamin D3 showed an increased cytoplasmic sphingolipid level (P< .01). This exploratory metabolomics study in 2 independent birth cohorts demonstrates that the beneficial effect of higher gestational vitamin D exposure on offspring respiratory health is characterized by specific maternal metabolic alterations during pregnancy, which involves the sphingomyelin pathway.