Prenatal opioid exposure and the early life epigenome: results from ECHO

Prenatal opioid exposure has been associated with adverse child health outcomes. Changes to the epigenome provide a plausible mechanism through which effects may be elicited. We investigated whether prenatal opioid exposure was associated with locus-specific changes in umbilical cord blood DNA methylation (DNAm) and gestational epigenetic age.

We leveraged data from the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes cohort. Prenatal opioid data was obtained from maternal self-report and/or medical record data. DNAm measures were generated from blood biospecimens collected at birth. Linear regression models tested associations between prenatal maternal opioid exposure and epigenetic outcomes in crude and fully adjusted models.

We tested the association between prenatal opioid exposure and cord blood DNAm at 15 CpG sites in 385 (n = 25 exposed, n = 360 unexposed) individuals from three cohorts. We identified a single CpG site (cg14303187) that was nominally associated with prenatal opioid exposure (p = 0.02, β = -0.012; 95% CI, -0.023 to -0.0012). No significant associations between exposure and gestational epigenetic age were found (n = 716 individuals from eight cohorts; n = 29 exposed, n = 687 unexposed).

We identified a nominally significant association between prenatal opioid exposure and DNAm at one CpG site. Future studies should continue investigating the effect of this exposure on the epigenome.