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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

EV0259

Effects of medical interventions on neonatal DNA methylation in threatened preterm labor

IMPACT OF MEDICAL INTERVENTIONS ON NEONATAL DNA METHYLATION IN THREATENED PRETERM LABOR

Among neonatal intensive care interventions, ventilation was associated with 3 CpG sites and cesarean delivery with 1 CpG site, while no significant association was found with corticosteroid exposure.

The study aimed to assess the effects of neonatal medical interventions on DNA methylation in infants exposed to threatened preterm labor (TPL), identify CpG sites associated with ventilation, cesarean delivery, and corticosteroid exposure, and examine the functional pathways affected. DNA methylation was profiled using dried blood spot samples collected at 48 hours of life from 99 neonates exposed to TPL (55 males, 44 females; gestational age 23 to 37 weeks, mean 30.4 ± 3.2 weeks). Associations between ventilation, cesarean delivery, and corticosteroid exposure and CpG methylation were evaluated using rank-based regression models, with false discovery rate (FDR) correction for multiple comparisons, and Gene Ontology enrichment was analyzed using GeneCodis3. Three CpG sites associated with neonatal ventilation were identified; these mapped to the CCDC67 and GSTTP2 genes and implicated oxidative stress pathways. One CpG site associated with cesarean delivery was identified in PGM5P2, a pseudogene linked to carbohydrate metabolism; corticosteroid exposure showed no significant association. Although these effects were small compared with those of gestational age and sex, they indicate that intensive care interventions leave detectable molecular traces. The study concluded that neonatal medical interventions leave measurable signatures on the methylome and, although lifesaving, may create subtle epigenetic vulnerabilities in preterm infants.

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