Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital

Around the Hospital News & Notes A COLL ABOR ATION of Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, Johns Hopkins University and three other institutions received a five-year, $2.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities to study how social adversity impacts the risk of childhood obesity. Researchers will focus in particular on mothers who have significant stress during pregnancy and through their lifetime and whether that impacts the development of obesity in their children. "e goal of the grant is to begin to unravel the mechanisms by which social adversity contributes to obesity risk early in life," says Sara Johnson, M.P.H., Ph.D., the principal investigator on the project from Johns Hopkins University. "is is an area called 'social epigenetics' where we study how early life experiences can cause some genes to be silenced or to be more active over time. We are testing the hypothesis that prenatal stress is associated with changes in genes that are involved in growth and metabolism in offspring." e study leverages data from an existing Johns Hopkins All Children's research project called PREDICT, a groundbreaking study of healthy children and the factors that help them stay that way. Researchers plan to recruit 470 mothers, with many being referred from Johns Hopkins All Children's-affiliated OB/GYN clinics. Data will be collected on the mother's experiences, including stressors, as well as supports and buffers that may protect her and her child. Neonatologist Mitzi Go, M.D., MSCR, FAAP, is the principal investigator for the Johns Hopkins All Children's site in St. Petersburg, Florida. About half of the study will be conducted by researchers at North Carolina State University. Other participating sites in the study, collaborating with Johns Hopkins All Children's and Johns Hopkins University (JHU), are Duke University, Yale University and JHU- affiliated Kennedy Krieger Institute. e researchers will analyze how stress is related to methylation of genes. Methylation can act like a light switch, turning gene expression up or down, even without changing the underlying DNA sequence. e researchers will follow the children to watch their growth patterns over the first 24 months of life. Previous studies show that children who are overweight in the first 24 months of life have about a sixfold increased risk for obesity at age 5 and increased risk for chronic health problems across their lifetime. Studying How Stress on Mothers Affects Their Children By Mike Stephenson 14 Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital | HopkinsAllChildrens.org

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