[F31] Maternal Diet and Early-Life Trans-Epidermal Water Loss in the SUNBEAM Cohort

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PROJECT SUMMARY /ABSTRACT Allergic conditions such as food allergy (FA) and atopic dermatitis (AD) affect millions of U.S. children and cost billions of dollars annually. These conditions often progress along the ‘atopic march,’ in which impaired skin barrier function facilitates allergen entry and immune dysregulation. Trans-epidermal water loss (TEWL), a noninvasive biomarker of barrier integrity, provides a sensitive indicator of barrier integrity. Identifying modifiable determinants of TEWL is important for both potential treatment and prevention of allergic conditions. Despite the biological plausibility that diet contributes to skin barrier structure and function, no studies have examined whether dietary patterns are associated with TEWL. Existing research is limited to small studies of single nutrients or supplements, which cannot capture real-world eating behaviors, synergistic food combinations, or overall dietary quality. There is a critical gap in understanding the association between dietary patterns and skin barrier integrity. This project will use the Systems Biology of Early Atopy (SUNBEAM) cohort to fill this gap. The SUNBEAM study follows over 2,000 U.S. mother-child dyads from pregnancy through early childhood and includes comprehensive dietary and TEWL analyses. Aim 1 will evaluate the relationship between dietary measures and TEWL using high-quality maternal diet data and TEWL measurements collected during pregnancy. Diet will be characterized using three complementary approaches: (1) established dietary indices, (2) supplement use, and (3) cutting-edge methods that use machine-learning algorithms to identify outcome-based, population-derived dietary patterns. Aim 2 extends this work to early infancy by evaluating whether maternal prenatal diet, breastfeeding status, and maternal postnatal diet are associated with infant TEWL at 1-2 days and 2 months postpartum. This provides the first test of intergenerational analysis focusing on the association of diet and TEWL during sensitive developmental windows when the skin barrier is forming and may shape later allergic risk. This is important because TEWL values as early as 2 months are predictive of later FA status, regardless of AD status, so prevention efforts must target exposures before 2 months. This study will provide the candidate with skills in nutritional epidemiology and support her development toward becoming an independent investigator in maternal and child nutrition. Findings from this study will be the first to look at the relationship between diet patterns and the skin barrier, both within a single person and across intergenerational diets in early life. This study is significant in identifying diet as an upstream, modifiable factor influencing barrier function, which lays the groundwork for future systems biology research. It is innovative because it links detailed dietary data to a biologically relevant biomarker while applying both traditional and machine-learning Istituzione: UNIV OF NORTH CAROLINA CHAPEL HILL PI: Erin Hosein Progetto: 1F31AI203219-01

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Source: reporter.nih.gov