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Faculty have requested this content not be shared on social media
CME Credit Offered
CME Credit Offered
Abstract Award
Abstract Award
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Poster Session 4

(1159) Concordance of early pregnancy smoking disclosure rates with DNA methylation among pregnant patients

Friday, January 31, 2025
4:00 PM – 6:00 PM  
Objective: Prenatal substance use is an increasing cause of morbidity and mortality. Changes in gene function that do not affect nucleotide sequence, or epigenetics, has emerged as a screening mechanism for substance use. We evaluated the application of serum-validated epigenetic DNA methylation markers in human placental tissues to assess the correlation between reported smoking and placental epigenetic markers.

Study Design:

This is a secondary analysis of the Stress, Pregnancy, and Health Study, a prospective study of 605 patients at an urban hospital from 2018-2022. Patients completed the Health Practices Survey (HPS) during mid-trimester and reported cigarette or marijuana use during pregnancy (current use) or in the 3 months prior to pregnancy (former use). We evaluated the degree of methylation in placental DNA using CPG sites previously associated with smoking. Differences in site cg05575921 have been reported from placental tissue, while sites cg23079012 and cg22112841 have been associated in serum.  Methylation percentages were determined using absolute values; p-values were calculated from log-transformed data.

Results: Among 488 patients who completed HPS, 440 (90.2%) reported never using cigarettes or marijuana, while 27 (6%) reported current smoking and 21 (5%) former smoking. Current smoking was not associated with placental DNA methylation of cg05575921 (51% vs 53% methylation in never users, p=0.13). This finding was similar for the other sites (Table 1). A sensitivity analysis comparing current and former users to never users also yielded non-significant results.

Conclusion: In this novel exploration of placental DNA methylation using validated sites, we did not find significant DNA methylation changes with smoking status. However, methylation was lower in current than never smokers, which is similar to the change observed in serum. This study is amongst the first to explore the application of validated DNA methylation markers of smoking on placental tissues, and will inform larger explorations of the association between placental DNA methylation and reported substance use during pregnancy.