Cultural effects on neurodevelopmental testing in children from six European countries: an analysis of NUTRIMENTHE Global Database.

Cultural background is an important variable influencing neuropsychological performance. Multinational projects usually involve gathering data from participants from different countries and/or different cultures. Little is known about the influence of culture on neuropsychological testing results in children and especially in European children. The objectives of this study were to compare neuropsychological performance of children from six European countries (Belgium, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Poland and Spain) using a comprehensive neuropsychological battery and to apply a statistical procedure to reduce the influence of country/cultural differences in neuropsychological performance. As expected, the results demonstrated differences in neuropsychological performance among children of the six countries involved. Cultural differences remained after adjusting for other confounders related to neuropsychological execution, such as sex, type of delivery, maternal age, gestational age and maternal educational level. Differences between countries disappeared and influence of culture was considerably reduced when standardised scores by country and sex were used. These results highlight the need for developing specific procedures to compare neuropsychological performance among children from different cultures to be used in multicentre studies.

Nutrition and neurodevelopment in children: focus on NUTRIMENTHE project.

There is growing evidence that early nutrition affects later cognitive performance. The idea that the diet of mothers, infants, and children could affect later mental performance has major implications for public health practice and policy development and for our understanding of human biology as well as for food product development, economic progress, and future wealth creation. To date, however, much of the evidence is from animal, retrospective studies and short-term nutritional intervention studies in humans. The positive effect of micronutrients on health, especially of pregnant women eating well to maximise their child's cognitive and behavioural outcomes, is commonly acknowledged. The current evidence of an association between gestational nutrition and brain development in healthy children is more credible for folate, n-3 fatty acids, and iron. Recent findings highlight the fact that single-nutrient supplementation is less adequate than supplementation with more complex formulae. However, the optimal content of micronutrient supplementation and whether there is a long-term impact on child's neurodevelopment needs to be investigated further. Moreover, it is also evident that future studies should take into account genetic heterogeneity when evaluating nutritional effects and also nutritional recommendations. The objective of the present review is to provide a background and update on the current knowledge linking nutrition to cognition and behaviour in children, and to show how the large collaborative European Project NUTRIMENTHE is working towards this aim.

Omega 3 fatty acids on child growth, visual acuity and neurodevelopment.

The aim of this review is to evaluate the effects of omega-3 long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 LCPUFA) supplementation in pregnant and lactating women and infants during postnatal life, on the visual acuity, psychomotor development, mental performance and growth of infants and children. Eighteen publications (11 sets of randomized control clinical trial [RCTs]) assessed the effects of the n-3 LCPUFA supplementation during pregnancy on neurodevelopment and growth, in the same subjects at different time points; 4 publications (2 data sets from RCTs) addressed physiological responses to n-3 LCPUFA supplementation during pregnancy & lactation and 5 publications (3 data sets from RCTs) exclusively during lactation. Some of these studies showed beneficial effects of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) supplementation during pregnancy and/or lactation especially on visual acuity outcomes and some on long-term neurodevelopment; a few, showed positive effects on growth. There were also 15 RCTs involving term infants who received infant formula supplemented with DHA, which met our selection criteria. Many of these studies claimed a beneficial effect of such supplementation on visual, neural, or developmental outcomes and no effects on growth. Although new well designed and conducted studies are being published, evidence from RCTs does not demonstrate still a clear and consistent benefit of n-3 LCPUFA supplementation during pregnancy and/or lactation on term infants growth, neurodevelopment and visual acuity. These results should be interpreted with caution due to methodological limitations of the included studies.

Integrative Analysis Reveals a Molecular Stratification of Systemic Autoimmune Diseases.

OBJECTIVE: Clinical heterogeneity, a hallmark of systemic autoimmune diseases, impedes early diagnosis and effective treatment, issues that may be addressed if patients could be classified into groups defined by molecular pattern. This study was undertaken to identify molecular clusters for reclassifying systemic autoimmune diseases independently of clinical diagnosis. METHODS: Unsupervised clustering of integrated whole blood transcriptome and methylome cross-sectional data on 955 patients with 7 systemic autoimmune diseases and 267 healthy controls was undertaken. In addition, an inception cohort was prospectively followed up for 6 or 14 months to validate the results and analyze whether or not cluster assignment changed over time. RESULTS: Four clusters were identified and validated. Three were pathologic, representing "inflammatory," "lymphoid," and "interferon" patterns. Each included all diagnoses and was defined by genetic, clinical, serologic, and cellular features. A fourth cluster with no specific molecular pattern was associated with low disease activity and included healthy controls. A longitudinal and independent inception cohort showed a relapse-remission pattern, where patients remained in their pathologic cluster, moving only to the healthy one, thus showing that the molecular clusters remained stable over time and that single pathogenic molecular signatures characterized each individual patient. CONCLUSION: Patients with systemic autoimmune diseases can be jointly stratified into 3 stable disease clusters with specific molecular patterns differentiating different molecular disease mechanisms. These results have important implications for future clinical trials and the study of nonresponse to therapy, marking a paradigm shift in our view of systemic autoimmune diseases.

Maternal PPARG Pro12Ala polymorphism is associated with infant's neurodevelopmental outcomes at 18 months of age.

BACKGROUND: Peroxisome proliferator activated receptors (PPARs) are ligand activated transcription factors with crucial functions in lipid homeostasis, glucose metabolism, anti-inflammatory processes, placental development, and are involved in cognitive functions and neurodegenerative diseases. Polymorphisms in PPAR genes are shown to influence the activity of these receptors. AIMS: 1) To examine the association of PPARG Pro12Ala polymorphism in pregnant women and their offspring on infant's neurodevelopmental outcomes during the first 18 months of life; 2) to determine the influence of Pro12Ala polymorphism on fatty acid concentrations in plasma phospholipids and placental tissue. STUDY DESIGN: 138 mother-infant pairs from the PREOBE observational study were genotyped for PPARG Pro12Ala. Plasma phospholipids and placental fatty acid concentrations were measured at delivery. Infants' neuropsychological assessment at 6 and 18 months of age was performed using Bayley III. RESULTS: The effect of Pro12Ala on infant's neurodevelopmental outcomes was detected at 18 months, but not at 6 months of age. 18 months old infants born to mothers with wild-type Pro12 genotype had better cognitive (OR=5.11, 95% CI: 1.379-18.96, p=0.015), language (OR=3.41, 95% CI: 1.35-11.24, p=0.044), and motor development scores (OR=4.77, 95% CI: 1.243-18.33, p=0.023) than the Ala allele carriers. Pro12Ala variants did not seem to affect fatty acids concentrations in blood nor in placenta at delivery. CONCLUSIONS: Infants born to mothers with Pro12 genotype have better neurodevelopmental outcomes at 18 months of age than Ala allele carriers, indicating a long-term transplacental action of PPARγ variants on foetal brain development.