Projects per year
Abstract
BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Iron is fundamental to many basic biological functions, and animal studies suggest that iron deficiency early in life can have a lasting impact on the developing brain.
SUBJECTS/METHODS: We used a population-based cohort of mothers and their children to assess the effect of iron status among pregnant women on the cognitive ability of their offspring. But to avoid the inherent confounding that occurs within observational epidemiology studies we examined the association of maternal genotype at single-nucleotide polymorphisms in the genes HFE (rs1799945) and (rs1800562), TF (rs3811647) and TMPRSS6 (rs1800562), which are related to iron, haemoglobin or transferrin levels, on their child's cognitive test scores at age 8.
RESULTS: We found strong associations between HFE and TMPRSS6 genotypes and mother's haemoglobin levels early in pregnancy (P-values are all
CONCLUSIONS: We therefore concluded that there is no evidence of an effect of exposure to low levels of iron (within the normal range) in pregnancy on offspring cognition at age 8. However, pregnant women in the UK with low haemoglobin levels are prescribed iron supplements and so we were unable to look at the effect of iron deficiency in our study.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 496-502 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | European Journal of Clinical Nutrition |
Volume | 68 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Apr 2014 |
Keywords
- iron
- IQ
- intelligence
- genetic variants
- mendelian randomization
- ALSPAC
- GENOME-WIDE ASSOCIATION
- CHILDREN
- INTELLIGENCE
- DEFICIENCY
- BEHAVIOR
- COHORT
Projects
- 4 Finished
Profiles
-
Professor Sarah J Lewis
- Bristol Medical School (PHS) - Professor of Molecular Epidemiology
- Bristol Population Health Science Institute
- MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit
- Cancer
Person: Academic , Member