Maternal opioid use is reflected on leukocyte telomere length of male newborns.

Rahimi Mehdi Abad, Fatemeh; Khalili, Parvin; Jalali, Fatemeh; Pirsadeghi, Ali; Esmaeili Nadimi, Ali; Manshoori, Azita; Jalali, Zahra

Opioid use accelerates normal aging in adults that raises a question on whether it may trans-generationally affect aging and aging biomarkers in the offspring of users as well? In the present research, we investigated the relative telomere length in umbilical cord blood of newborns born to opioid consuming mothers compared to normal controls. Telomere length shortening is a known biomarker of aging and aging related diseases. Its measure at birth or early in life is considered as a predictor of individual health in adulthood. Here, we performed a case-control study to investigate whether maternal opioid use affects newborns relative telomere length (RTL). 57 mother-newborn dyads were included in this study, 30 neonates with opioid using mothers (OM), and 27 with not-opioid using mothers (NOM)). RTL was measured in leukocyte cells genomic DNA using real-time PCR. The correlation of maternal opioid use with neonates telomer length was assessed using logistic regression analysis. The results displayed a significant association between odds ratio of long RTL and maternal opioid use when sensitivity analysis was performed by neonate sex; where the data indicates significantly increased odds ratio of long leukocyte RTL in association with maternal opioid use in male neonates only. Further work is necessary to assess this association in larger samples and test the potential underlying mechanisms for this observation.

TELOMERES; LEUKOCYTES; NEWBORN infants; OPIOIDS; LOGISTIC regression analysis; CORD blood; ODDS ratio

PLoS ONE, 2021, Vol 16, Issue 12, p1

1932-6203

Academic Journal

10.1371/journal.pone.0261013