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BMC Medicine
Published in: BMC Medicine 1/2019

Open Access 01-12-2019 | Research article

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

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

Published in: BMC Medicine | Issue 1/2019

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Abstract

Background

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.

Methods

Participants 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.

Results

The 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).

Conclusions

The 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.
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Metadata
Title
Prenatal cadmium exposure is associated with shorter leukocyte telomere length in Chinese newborns
Authors
Lina Zhang
Lulu Song
Bingqing Liu
Mingyang Wu
Lulin Wang
Bin Zhang
Chao Xiong
Wei Xia
Yuanyuan Li
Zhongqiang Cao
Youjie Wang
Shunqing Xu
Publication date
01-12-2019
Publisher
BioMed Central
Published in
BMC Medicine / Issue 1/2019
Electronic ISSN: 1741-7015
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-019-1262-4

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