Maternal antenatal anxiety and electrophysiological functioning amongst a sub-set of preschoolers participating in the GUSTO cohort

10.1186/s12888-020-2454-3BMC Psychiatry2016

Effects of long-chain PUFA supplementation in infant formula on cognitive function in later childhood

Background: breastfeeding has been shown to enhance global measures of intelligence in children. However, few studies have examined associations between breastfeeding and specific cognitive task performance in the first 2 y of life, particularly in an Asian population.Objective: we assessed associations between early infant feeding and detailed measures of cognitive development in the first 2 y of life in healthy Asian children born at term.Design: in a prospective cohort study, neurocognitive testing was performed in 408 healthy children (aged 6, 18, and 24 mo) from uncomplicated pregnancies (i.e., birth weight >2500 and <4000 g, gestational age ?37 wk, and 5-min Apgar score ?9). Tests included memory (deferred imitation, relational binding, habituation) and attention tasks (visual expectation, auditory oddball) as well as the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, Third Edition (BSID-III). Children were stratified into 3 groups (low, intermediate, and high) on the basis of breastfeeding duration and exclusivity.Results: after potential confounding variables were controlled for, significant associations and dose-response relations were observed for 4 of the 15 tests. Higher breastfeeding exposure was associated with better memory at 6 mo, demonstrated by greater preferential looking toward correctly matched items during early portions of a relational memory task (i.e., relational binding task: P-trend = 0.015 and 0.050 for the first two 1000-ms time bins, respectively). No effects of breastfeeding were observed at 18 mo. At 24 mo, breastfed children were more likely to display sequential memory during a deferred imitation memory task (P-trend = 0.048), and toddlers with more exposure to breastfeeding scored higher in receptive language [+0.93 (0.23, 1.63) and +1.08 (0.10, 2.07) for intermediate- and high-breastfeeding groups, respectively, compared with the low-breastfeeding group], as well as expressive language [+0.58 (?0.06, 1.23) and +1.22 (0.32, 2.12) for intermediate- and high-breastfeeding groups, respectively] assessed via the BSID-III.Conclusions: our findings suggest small but significant benefits of breastfeeding for some aspects of memory and language development in the first 2 y of life, with significant improvements in only 4 of 15 indicators. Whether the implicated processes confer developmental advantages is unknown and represents an important area for future researc

Quantifying the contribution of recessive coding variation to developmental disorders.

We estimated the genome-wide contribution of recessive coding variation from 6,040 families from the Deciphering Developmental Disorders study. The proportion of cases attributable to recessive coding variants was 3.6% in patients of European ancestry, compared to 50% explained by de novo coding mutations. It was higher (31%) in patients with Pakistani ancestry, due to elevated autozygosity. Half of this recessive burden is attributable to known genes. We identified two genes not previously associated with recessive developmental disorders, KDM5B and EIF3F, and functionally validated them with mouse and cellular models. Our results suggest that recessive coding variants account for a small fraction of currently undiagnosed non-consanguineous individuals, and that the role of noncoding variants, incomplete penetrance, and polygenic mechanisms need further exploration

Infant feeding effects on early neurocognitive development in asian children

10.3945/ajcn.114.095414American Journal of Clinical Nutrition1012326-336GUSTO (Growing up towards Healthy Outcomes