Xie, Y.; Peng, G.; Zhao, H.; Scharfe, C. Association of Maternal Age and Blood Markers for Metabolic Disease in Newborns. Metabolites2024, 14, 5.
Xie, Y.; Peng, G.; Zhao, H.; Scharfe, C. Association of Maternal Age and Blood Markers for Metabolic Disease in Newborns. Metabolites 2024, 14, 5.
Xie, Y.; Peng, G.; Zhao, H.; Scharfe, C. Association of Maternal Age and Blood Markers for Metabolic Disease in Newborns. Metabolites2024, 14, 5.
Xie, Y.; Peng, G.; Zhao, H.; Scharfe, C. Association of Maternal Age and Blood Markers for Metabolic Disease in Newborns. Metabolites 2024, 14, 5.
Abstract
Pregnancy at advanced maternal age is considered a risk factor for adverse maternal, fetal, and neonatal outcomes. Here we investigated whether maternal age could be associated with differences in the blood levels of newborn screening (NBS) markers for inborn metabolic disorders on the Recommended Universal Screening Panel (RUSP). Population-level NBS data from screen-negative singleton infants were examined, which included blood metabolic markers and covariates such as gestational age, birth weight, age at blood collection, infant sex, parent-reported ethnicity, and maternal age at delivery. Marker levels were compared between maternal age groups (age range: 15-44 years) using effect size analyses, which controlled for group size differences and potential confounding from other covariates. Our results showed that 13% of the markers had maternal age-related differences including newborn metabolites with either increased (C14, C16, C18, C18:1, C3DC) or decreased (C5OH) levels at advanced maternal age group (≥35 years, absolute Cohen’s d ≥ 0.2). The increased C3DC levels in this group correlated with a higher false-positive rate in newborn screening for malonic acidemia (p-value < 0.001), while no significant difference in screening performance was seen for other markers. Maternal age at delivery is associated with inborn metabolic differences and should be considered together with other clinical variables in genetic disease screening.
Keywords
maternal age; newborn metabolites; inborn errors of metabolism; public health; newborn screening; precision medicine
Subject
Biology and Life Sciences, Other
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
