Evidence for the placenta-brain axis: multi-omic kernel aggregation predicts intellectual and social impairment in children born extremely preterm.
Hudson P Santos, Arjun Bhattacharya, Robert M Joseph and 5 others
PMID 33308293WHAT IT FOUND
Placental molecular profiles modestly predicted later social and intellectual scores in children born extremely preterm.
External checks did not confirm this.
Key findings
01The combined placental markers explained about 8% of the variation in social scores and 12% of the variation in intellectual scores.
02Combining placental molecular datasets predicted social and intellectual scores better than using a single dataset alone.
03External validation in an independent placenta methylation dataset did not show significant differences in predicted social or intellectual scores across autism groups.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample was children born extremely preterm, so results may not apply to term-born children. The associations are correlational and cannot show that placental markers caused later social or intellectual impairment. External validation was inconclusive, and different measurement platforms may reduce predictive power. The placental cell-type analysis used a limited set of reference cell types and may not capture the full cellular complexity of placenta tissue. Long storage of placental tissue required filtering of low-quality RNA data. This reduced the number of transcripts analysed. The number of autism cases was small relative to the genome-wide analysis.
Declared interests
The work was funded by NIH offices, including Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and National Institute of Nursing Research. The supplied text does not report commercial funding or author conflicts.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read these placental molecular profiles as a clinical test for autism or intellectual impairment. The findings are correlational, the external validation was inconclusive, and the models may not generalise to term-born children.