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Transplacental Antimicrobial Antibodies and Childhood Asthma: Maternal Nativity as an Upstream Factor

Year: 2025
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Early-life microbial exposure to microbes may play a role in asthma development. This study tests the hypothesis that mothers born in low-income countries might have been exposed to diverse microbes-leading to greater diversity and higher levels of transplacental anti-microbial antibodies, thereby conferring protection against asthma in offspring. METHODS: In the prospective Boston Birth Cohort, IgG antibody reactome against microbes (2740 species; 1311 genera) was profiled in cord blood, using Phage ImmunoPrecipitation Sequencing. Multinomial regression models were applied to examine the associations of cord blood IgG reactome with child risk of physician-diagnosed atopy and asthma. Mediation analysis was performed to examine the inter-relationships among maternal nativity, IgG reactome and risk of developing childhood asthma. RESULTS: This report included 943 mother-child dyads enrolled at birth and followed prospectively. Compared to children of US-born mothers, children of foreign-born mothers had a lower prevalence of asthma (17.5% vs. 30.5%) and greater diversity of cord blood IgG antibodies against hundreds of microbes (FDR < 0.05). Cord blood seropositivity to peptides or proteins from 6 microbes was inversely associated with the risk of asthma in children, and children with more seropositivity to these microbes were at a lower risk of developing asthma (p < 0.001). IgG seropositivity to A. actinomycetemcomitans, H. pylori, S. flexneri, and T. parva each mediated 17%-62% of the association between maternal nativity and child risk of asthma. CONCLUSION: In this US prospective birth cohort, maternal transplacental IgG reactivity to four microbes (A. actinomycetemcomitans, H. pylori, S. flexneri and T. parva) was associated with a lower risk of childhood asthma, and partly explains the lower risk of asthma in children of mothers born outside the US.
Source: Allergy
DOI: 10.1111/all.70167
Authors: Xiumei Hong, Kari C. Nadeau, Pamela Frischmeyer‐Guerrerio, Guoying Wang, August F. Jernbom, Shuai Li, Ni Zhao, William R. Morgenlander, Julia W. Angkeow, Manju Thakar, Colleen Pearson, William G. Adams, H. Benjamin Larman, Hongkai Ji, Xiaobin Wang
Institutions: Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Science for Life Laboratory, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Boston University, Boston Medical Center
Language: English
Subfield: Physiology
Field: Medicine
Open Access status: green
Awards: Interplay of the T Cell Repertoire Development and Early Life Exposure on Incident Risk of Peanut Allergy, Maternal Exposure to Low Level Mercury, Metabolome, and Child Cardiometabolic Risk in Multi-Ethnic Prospective Birth Cohorts, Boston University Clinical and Translational Science Institute - U Program, Functional RNA Modifications, Micronutrient Exposure, Developmental Disabilities, Preterm Birth and Child Long-term Cardiometabolic Risk: Integrate Proteomics with Birth Cohort, Immune Development Across the Life Course: Integrating Exposures and Multi-Omics in the Boston Birth Cohort
OpenAlex ID: W4416765394
FWCI: 0.533
Cites: 45
Cited by: 1
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