Prenatal cadmium exposure is associated with shorter leukocyte telomere length in Chinese newborns

Lina Zhang,Yuanyuan Li,Shunqing Xu,Wei Xia,Bin Zhang,Lulin Wang,Zhongqiang Cao,Chao Xiong,Mingyang Wu,Bingqing Liu,Youjie Wang,Lulu Song

doi:10.1186/s12916-019-1262-4

Abstract

BackgroundNewborn telomere length (TL) is considered a potential marker for future disease and lifelong health, but few epidemiological studies have examined the determinants of TL in early life. The study aim was to investigate whether there is an association between prenatal cadmium exposure and relative cord blood TL in Chinese newborns.MethodsParticipants were 410 mother–newborn pairs drawn from a prospective birth cohort study conducted in Wuhan, China, between November 2013 and March 2015. Urine samples were collected from pregnant women during their period of institutional delivery. Urinary cadmium concentrations were measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction detection was used to measure relative TL using genomic DNA isolated from umbilical cord blood leukocytes. Multivariate linear regression models were used to estimate the effect of prenatal urinary cadmium concentration on relative cord blood TL.ResultsThe geometric mean of maternal urinary cadmium concentration was 0.68 μg/g creatinine. In the multivariate-adjusted linear regression model, per doubling of maternal urinary cadmium concentration was associated with 6.83% (95% CI − 11.44%, − 1.97%; P = 0.006) shorter relative cord blood TL. Stratified analyses indicated that the inverse association between prenatal urinary cadmium and newborn relative TL was more pronounced among female infants and mothers < 29 years, while there were no significant effect modification according to infant sex (P for interaction = 0.907) and maternal age (P for interaction = 0.797).ConclusionsThe findings indicated that increased maternal urinary cadmium was associated with shortened relative cord blood TL. The results provide more evidence of the negative effects of environmental cadmium exposure and suggest that accelerated aging or cadmium-related diseases may begin in early life.

Highlights

Newborn telomere length (TL) is considered a potential marker for future disease and lifelong health, but few epidemiological studies have examined the determinants of TL in early life
After further adjustment for maternal characteristics, prenatal urinary cadmium remained significantly and inversely associated with relative TL; a doubling of urinary cadmium was associated with 5.73% shorter relative cord blood TL
The present results indicate that prenatal cadmium exposure was inversely associated with relative cord blood TL after adjustment for potential confounders; per doubling of prenatal urinary cadmium contribute to 6.83% shorter relative cord blood TL

Summary

Introduction

Newborn telomere length (TL) is considered a potential marker for future disease and lifelong health, but few epidemiological studies have examined the determinants of TL in early life. The study aim was to investigate whether there is an association between prenatal cadmium exposure and relative cord blood TL in Chinese newborns. Epidemiological studies have reported that prenatal cadmium exposure increased the risk of adverse perinatal outcomes, such as preterm birth [6, 7] and lower birth weight [8,9,10]. Shortened telomere length (TL) is associated with aging-related diseases, such as type 2 diabetes mellitus [13, 14], cardiovascular disease [15, 16], and cancer [17, 18]

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Discussion

Conclusion