Kristof Y. Neven

TL;DR: It is shown that prenatal exposure to air pollution is associated with nitrosative stress and epigenetic alterations in the placenta, and a potential co-interaction of different biological mechanisms on the level of placental oxidative stress, epigenetics, aging, and energy metabolism is extended.

TL;DR: Lower placental leptin promoter methylation in association with fine particulate matter air pollution during pregnancy and placental nitrosative stress at birth in the ENVIRONAGE cohort was negatively associated with PM2.5 exposure during the second trimester, and with placental 3-NTp, a marker of oxidative/nitrosative Stress.

TL;DR: Transplacental in-utero exposure to particulate matter is associated with an increased overall placental mutation rate, which occurred in concert with epigenetic alterations in key DNA repair and tumour suppressor genes, suggesting that exposure to air pollution can induce changes to fetal and neonatal DNA repair capacity.

TL;DR: EVs are a very promising tool, as biological fluids are easily obtainable biological media that, if successful in identifying early alterations induced by the environment and predictive of disease, would be amenable to use for potential future preventive and diagnostic applications.

TL;DR: The observation in placental tissue suggests that biological processes may be affected from prenatal life onwards, thereby identifying new molecular processes linking maternal BMI and fetal metabolic programming.