Newborn Blood DNA Methylation Data from Prenatal Smoking Exposures Meta-Analysis

A 2026 meta-analysis by the Pregnancy And Childhood Epigenetics Consortium (PACE) examined associations between prenatal tobacco smoking exposures and epigenome-wide DNA methylation in newborns. The study analyzed data from 11,175 parent-newborn pairs across 19 cohorts, primarily using Illumina450K and EPIC array methylation data. Results identified thousands of differentially methylated CpGs associated with maternal sustained smoking, with minimal impacts observed for other exposures like secondhand smoke.

Use Cases

• Validate epigenetic markers for maternal smoking based on the 8,862 associated CpGs identified.
• Investigate gene-environment interactions using the over 300 novel genes linked to smoking exposure.
• Compare self-reported questionnaire data with objective biomarker data (cotinine measurements) for exposure classification.
• Explore functional enrichment of smoking-associated CpGs across multiple tissues as described in the results.

Strengths

• Large sample size of 11,175 parent-newborn pairs from 19 cohorts.
• Primary analysis identified differential methylation at 8,862 CpGs associated with maternal sustained smoking.
• Includes both self-reported questionnaire data and objective cotinine measurements from a subset of studies.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic or cohort bias inherent to the meta-analysis design.

Provenance

Source

Pregnancy And Childhood Epigenetics Consortium (PACE) meta-analysis.

Collection Method

Meta-analysis of 19 cohorts using questionnaire data and, in some studies, maternal blood or urine cotinine measurements.

Time Range

Temporal coverage of the underlying cohort studies is not specified.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-16 19:34:44.

Geography

Spatial coverage is not specified, but involves multiple international cohorts.