Differential methylation patterns in cord blood associated with prenatal exposure to neighborhood crime: an epigenome-wide association study and regional analysis
Exposure to prenatal social stressors during pregnancy has been linked to epigenetic changes in DNA methylation (DNAm); however, associations of neighborhood social stressors during pregnancy on offspring DNAm are understudied. We used data from the Newborn Epigenetic STudy to conduct an epigenome-wide analysis of the association between prenatal exposure to neighborhood crime and DNAm in offspring cord blood (n=184) using Illumina’s HumanMethylation450k BeadChip. Prenatal exposure to neighborhood crime at the census block group-level was mapped to the participant’s residential addresses. Models were adjusted for maternal age, race, education, technical variation, cell type composition, and offspring sex (in non-stratified models). Among the overall sample, prenatal exposure to neighborhood crime was associated with DNAm in 10 CpG sites (FDR<0.05). In sex-stratified analyses, 7 statistically significant CpG sites were associated with neighborhood crime exposure during pregnancy among female offspring only (FDR<0.05). We did not identify statistically significant CpG sites in male offspring. Associations were comparable with additional adjustment for prenatal smoking, birth weight, and gestational age at delivery, but were attenuated after winsorization to account for outliers. Our findings suggest possible links between prenatal exposure to neighborhood crime and offspring DNAm, but more research is needed in larger cohorts across wider geographic areas.