Cigarette smoking during pregnancy: Chromosome translocations and phenotypic susceptibility in mothers and newborns

Abstract

The effects of maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy on structural chromosome aberrations were evaluated in peripheral lymphocytes from 239 mothers and their 241 newborns to determine whether smoking during pregnancy, genetic susceptibility, and race are associated with chromosome aberrations including translocations. Demographic information and cigarette smoking data were obtained via questionnaire. There were 119 Caucasian Americans, 118 African Americans, and 2 Asian Americans. The average maternal age was 24.9 ± 5.8 (mean ± S.D.) years. Thirty-nine percent of the Caucasian Americans and 45.4% of the African Americans self-reported that they were active smokers during the index pregnancy. The average number of cigarettes smoked per day was 2.65 ± 5.75 and 1.37 ± 3.17 for Caucasian and African American mothers, respectively. Peripheral blood lymphocytes from the mother and from the fetal side of the placenta were evaluated for chromosome aberrations by whole chromosome painting and for genetic susceptibility using an in vitro bleomycin challenge assay. Spontaneous translocation frequencies in both maternal and newborn lymphocytes were not associated with cigarette smoking, socio-economic status, or education. The absence of a smoking effect may be attributable to the low level of cigarette usage in these subjects. The average bleomycin-induced damage in the maternal and newborn populations was 0.37 ± 0.27 and 0.15 ± 0.14 breaks per cell, respectively, a difference that was highly significant (p < 0.0001). In newborns there was a positive association between bleomycin sensitivity and the frequencies of aberrations as measured by chromosome painting: p ≤ 0.0007 for dicentrics and fragments, and p ≤ 0.002 for translocations. Caucasian American newborns demonstrated a significant association between dicentrics and fragments as measured by painting, and bleomycin sensitivity (p ≤ 0.0002), but no such association was observed for African American newborns. The results of this study indicate that while differences were observed between African Americans and Caucasian Americans, race does not appear to be a major contributor to chromosome damage in newborns or their mothers. However, peripheral lymphocytes in pregnant women are more susceptible to genetic damage than peripheral lymphocytes in newborns.

Differences in Cytogenetic Sensitivity to Ionizing Radiation in Newborns and Adults

“…These results clearly show that this current study has enough statistical power to confirm a known response. Cigarette smoking has been previously shown to increase the frequencies of chromosome aberrations (4) but not every study has observed this effect, e.g., (22) and we did not observe a smoking effect here.…”

Prenatal PAH exposure is associated with chromosome-specific aberrations in cord blood

“…Spearman correlation coefficient was used for bi-variate associations between quantitative variables. Because we noted that the variance of both translocations and stable aberrations increased with their means, we used negative binomial regression models to examine the association between chromosomal aberration and translocation frequencies in cord blood and prenatal air PAHs, with and without control for child’s sex, ethnicity (Dominican vs. African-American) and smoking status at home[16]. Prenatal airborne PAH levels had a skewed distribution and were logarithmically transformed in order to meet assumptions for T-tests and to reduce the impact of extreme values when used as the main predictor in the models for predicting chromosomal aberration frequency.…”

Frequency of chromosomal aberrations in Prague mothers and their newborns

“…Other smaller studies also analyzed the genomic frequencies of translocations in newborns [13,[15][16][17]. Recently, a study was published evaluating the effect of maternal smoking during pregnancy on structural chromosome aberrations in 241 newborns [18].…”