Maternal psychiatric disease and epigenetic evidence suggest a common biology for poor fetal growth

Table 7 Methylation at the leptin receptor locus by timing of psychiatric diagnosis among those not on antidepressant medication

Gene and locus	Methylation (adjusted Beta)	No History of Psychiatric Diagnosis and no Active Psychiatric Diagnosis^b (n = 151)	History of Psychiatric Diagnosis but no Active Psychiatric Diagnosis (n = 8)	History of Psychiatric Diagnosis and Active Psychiatric Diagnosis (n = 13)	p-value (Fisher’s exact test)
		57/151 (37.8 %)	2/8 (25.0 %)	10/13 (76.9 %)
		had SGA or IUGR	had SGA or IUGR	had SGA or IUGR
LEPR^a	<= Median	75 (49.7 %)	1 (12.5 %)	12 (92.3 %)	4.8 × 10⁻⁴
cg21655790	> Median	76 (50.3 %)	7 (87.5 %)	1 (7.7 %)	4.8 × 10⁻⁴

^aMethylation differs between these three categories (Fisher’s exact test p = 4.8 x 10⁻⁴). Three follow up tests (exact binomial tests that p = 0.5) revealed that those with active maternal psychiatric diagnoses are more likely to have below median placental methylation at LEPR/cg21655790 (FDR adjusted p = 0.01)
^bAs noted in Table 5, there were 2 people with no prior history of psychiatric diagnosis who had newly reported psychiatric diagnosis in pregnancy. Neither of these participants had LEPR/cg2165570 methylation data

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