Publications by authors named "Assiamira Ferrara"

Introduction: Poor sleep quality in childhood can predict sleep quality throughout the lifecourse and other health outcomes. Endocrine-disrupting chemicals can affect adults' sleep quality, and prenatal phenol exposure impacts fetal development.

Objective: To assess associations between prenatal phenol concentrations and child sleep outcomes.

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Background: Organophosphate ester flame retardants and plasticizers (OPEs) have myriad uses in industry and consumer products. Increasing human exposure to OPEs has raised concerns about their potential effects on child neurodevelopment during pregnancy.

Objective: We investigated whether OPE urinary concentrations during pregnancy were associated with child autism-related outcomes.

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Importance: Identifying atypical body mass index (BMI) trajectories in children and understanding associated, modifiable early-life factors may help prevent childhood obesity.

Objective: To characterize multiphase BMI trajectories in children and identify associated modifiable early-life factors.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cohort study included longitudinal data obtained from January 1997 to June 2024, from the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) cohort, which included children aged 1 to 9 years with 4 or more weight and height assessments.

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Importance: Higher blood pressure in early life may signal cardiovascular disease over the life course, but determinants of blood pressure in early life are poorly understood.

Objective: To examine the association of maternal cardiometabolic risk factors during pregnancy with offspring blood pressure from age 2 to 18 years and explore whether the association is modified by offspring sex and race and ethnicity.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cohort study analyzed data from the Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes program between January 1, 1994, and March 31, 2023.

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Objective: Lifestyle behaviors impact postpartum weight, yet intrinsic motivation for them-i.e., what individuals enjoy, value, and do with ease-is poorly understood.

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Parabens are widely used preservatives with endocrine-disrupting properties, but their role in glucose metabolism during pregnancy is unclear. This study examines prospective associations between urinary concentrations of four parabens in early and mid-pregnancy and gestational diabetes (GDM). A matched case-control study nested within a diverse longitudinal pregnancy cohort (PETALS) with universal GDM screening matched GDM cases to two controls (111 cases; 222 controls).

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Background: Environmental exposures and social determinants likely influence specific childhood asthma phenotypes.

Objective: We hypothesized that the Child Opportunity Index (COI) at birth, measuring multiple neighborhood opportunities, influences incidence rates (IRs) for asthma with recurrent exacerbations (ARE).

Methods: We tested for COI associations with ARE IRs in 15,877 children born between 1990 and 2018 in the ECHO (Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes) program.

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Importance: Food insecurity is a growing public health concern, but its association with perinatal complications remains unclear.

Objective: To examine whether food insecurity in pregnancy was associated with the risk of perinatal complications and determine whether these potential associations differed by receipt of food assistance.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cohort study used data from a pregnancy survey conducted between June 22, 2020, and September 9, 2022, at Kaiser Permanente Northern California, an integrated health care system serving a diverse population of 4.

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Executive functioning (EF) has been linked to chronic disease risk in children. Health behaviors are thought to partially explain this association. The current cross-sectional study evaluated specific domains of EF and varied health behaviors in three pediatric life stages.

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Prevalence of autism diagnosis has historically differed by demographic factors. Using data from 8224 participants drawn from the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Program, we examined relationships between demographic factors and parent-reported autism-related traits as captured by the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS; T score > 65) and compared these to relations with parent-reported clinician diagnosis of ASD, in generalized linear mixed effects regression analyses. Results suggested lower odds of autism diagnosis, but not of SRS T > 65, for non-Hispanic Black children (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 0.

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Purpose: The Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes (ECHO) Cohort has enrolled over 60,000 children to examine how early environmental factors (broadly defined) are associated with key child health outcomes. The ECHO Cohort may be well-positioned to contribute to our understanding of rural environments and contexts, which has implications for rural health disparities research. The present study examined the outcome of child obesity to not only illustrate the suitability of ECHO Cohort data for these purposes but also determine how various definitions of rural and urban populations impact the presentation of findings and their interpretation.

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Background: More than half of pregnant patients with overweight or obesity exceed national gestational weight gain (GWG) guidelines, increasing their risk of adverse outcomes. There is an urgent need to develop effective and scalable interventions to improve GWG.

Objective: To describe the protocol of Lifestyle, Eating, and Activity in Pregnancy (LEAP), a cluster randomized controlled trial evaluating a mobile health (mHealth) intervention promoting appropriate GWG in an integrated healthcare system.

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Concerns persist about the potential impact of prenatal exposure to bisphenols (BP) and their replacement analogues on childhood asthma and allergies. Previous studies on single and small cohorts had limited statistical power, few investigated analogues BPF and BPS, and even fewer examined atopic outcomes. Our objective was to assess whether prenatal exposures to individual environmental bisphenols (BPA, BPF, BPS) influence risk of childhood asthma, allergic rhinitis, and atopic dermatitis.

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Article Synopsis
  • A study investigated how prenatal dietary patterns affect child outcomes related to autism, analyzing data from up to 6084 participants across 14 cohorts.
  • Results showed that higher scores on healthy eating indices were linked to lower scores on the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS), indicating a potential connection between better prenatal diets and social behaviors in children.
  • However, there were no significant links found between prenatal diets and official autism diagnoses, suggesting that while diet may influence some traits, more research is needed to clarify its effects on autism-related conditions.
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Article Synopsis
  • The study investigates how prenatal dietary quality, assessed through the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) and Empirical Dietary Inflammatory Pattern (EDIP), impacts infant sizes at birth and growth patterns up to age 24 months.
  • Researchers analyzed data from 2854 parent-child pairs participating in a long-term health program, highlighting the diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds of the participants.
  • Results revealed that a healthier diet during pregnancy (high HEI score) is linked to lower likelihoods of having large infants at birth and experiencing rapid growth, suggesting that dietary choices may play a vital role in combating obesity later in life.
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Introduction: Organophosphate esters (OPEs) are increasing in use as flame retardants and plasticizers and concerns have been raised given their endocrine-disrupting activities and possible obesogenic consequences. However, longitudinal studies on gestational OPE exposure and childhood obesity are scarce. This study examined whether OPE levels in maternal urine during pregnancy were associated with the risk of childhood obesity.

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Article Synopsis
  • Researchers studied the link between microbiome-derived metabolites and the risk of gestational diabetes (GDM) during early to mid-pregnancy in a diverse population, highlighting how these metabolites might play a role in diabetes risk.
  • The study included a total of 91 GDM and 180 non-GDM participants in its discovery phase and validated the findings with additional groups, using advanced metabolomic techniques to analyze serum samples.
  • Findings suggested that certain metabolites, particularly carbocyclic acids and branched-chain amino acids, were significantly associated with GDM risk, and a predictive model combining these metabolites with conventional risk factors proved to be more effective in identifying GDM risk than traditional methods alone.
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Article Synopsis
  • Childhood sleep quality is influenced by factors such as maternal stress during pregnancy and can predict later health outcomes.
  • The study examined data to understand how prenatal stress relates to sleep quality in children aged 4-8, finding that both prenatal and postnatal stress have significant effects.
  • Results indicate that postnatal stress mediates the impact of prenatal stress on sleep issues, highlighting the need for further research on maternal mental health and child sleep disturbances.
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Purpose: The purpose of this study is to assess associations of theoretically reallocating time from sleep, sedentary behavior, or light-intensity physical activity (LPA) to moderate/vigorous-intensity physical activity (MVPA) during pregnancy with infant growth outcomes.

Methods: We used data from a cohort of pregnant individuals with overweight or obesity ( n = 116). At 9 to 15 and 30 to 36 wk of gestation, waking movement was measured using wrist-worn accelerometers and sleep duration was self-reported.

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Article Synopsis
  • Scientists are trying to understand how certain factors might affect the health of mothers and babies, especially when it comes to birth weight.
  • They studied data from over 28,000 mother-baby pairs to see how being exposed to certain environmental factors could impact birth weight and the chances of low birth weight.
  • They found that small changes in exposure have a bigger effect on vulnerable groups, showing that these groups face more health challenges than others.
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Importance: Limited access to healthy foods, resulting from residence in neighborhoods with low food access, is a public health concern. The contribution of this exposure in early life to child obesity remains uncertain.

Objective: To examine associations of neighborhood food access during pregnancy or early childhood with child body mass index (BMI) and obesity risk.

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Background: Prenatal fish intake is a key source of omega-3 (ω-3) polyunsaturated fatty acids needed for brain development, yet intake is generally low, and studies addressing associations with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and related traits are lacking.

Objective: This study aimed to examine associations of prenatal fish intake and ω-3 supplement use with both autism diagnosis and broader autism-related traits.

Methods: Participants were drawn from 32 cohorts in the Environmental influences on Child Health Outcomes Cohort Consortium.

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Background: Estimates for the effects of environmental exposures on health outcomes, including secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure, often present considerable variability across studies. Knowledge of the reasons behind these differences can aid our understanding of effects in specific populations as well as inform practices of combining data from multiple studies.

Objectives: This study aimed to assess the presence of effect modification by measured sociodemographic characteristics on the effect of SHS exposure during pregnancy on birth weights that may drive differences observed across cohorts.

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