NZ-Singapore Study Uses Hair to Research Diet and Pregnancy

Media Release

24 February 2015

Does Diet Influence Pregnancy Complications? Leading Edge Metabolomic Research Underway in New Zealand

Can you eat a better diet to avoid complications in pregnancy? There is increasing evidence that the diet of pregnant women is associated with the health of both mother and baby, and some pregnancy complications.

Now, an incredible project is underway between New Zealand and Singapore to investigate the way diet influences pregnancy complications. The project tests hair and blood samples from pregnant women, and looks for metabolites or ‘biomarkers’ of diet. Conventionally, the only way of assessing diets has been by using food records kept by women involved in research. The hair and blood biomarkers are expected to provide a more objective and accurate measure of food intake.

This major Gravida (New Zealand) scientific study, alongside Singapore, will see if those biomarkers provide a correlation with pregnancy complications, as well as with mothers’ and babies’ health.

“We have previously identified biomarker or metabolite profiles from hair in early pregnancy that can tell us which women are going to go on and suffer pregnancy complications. In this Food for Healthtitled study, we are moving to the next step of research to see how different diets influence metabolite profiles and pregnancy outcomes,” says Director of Gravida, Professor Philip Baker.

“Once concluded, the best outcome from our study is that we may be able to say: if you eat this during pregnancy, your metabolic profile will look like this, and you will have a higher risk of getting gestational diabetes, or having an early birth, or having one of a number of other complications in pregnancy.” Professor Baker stressed, though, that it was early days in what is cutting edge research.

Samples of hair and blood from 1200 Singaporean women have begun arriving at Gravida’s Auckland Laboratories. Metabolomics experts Dr Karolina Sulek and Dr Ting-Li Han, have started to test the hair and blood samples, which are from a cohort of Singaporean women and children known internationally as GUSTO – Growing Up in Singapore Towards Healthy Outcomes. This was headed by Lead Principal Investigator, Associate Professor Yap Seng Chong, who is Associate Professor and Senior Consultant with the National University Health System and Executive Director of the Agency for Science Technology and Research’s Singapore Institute of Clinical Studies.

From 2009 on, the GUSTO mothers participated actively in the GUSTO study, during and after pregnancy. Their blood, tissue and urine samples were saved in a biobank for use in perpetuity internationally. The mothers also filled out food records on what they ate during pregnancy. Their health and the health of their unborn babies (now children three to five years old) have been followed since around week 14 of pregnancy.

The Food for Health joint project between Gravida and the Singapore Institute for Clinical Studies is using biobank samples and food records from the GUSTO study. Part of the research also involves the exchange of PhD or masters students in various disciplines between New Zealand and Singapore.

Last year, doctoral nutritional student Jamie de Seymour won a Prime Minister’s scholarship to conduct initial set up work in Singapore. This year Airu Chia, a PhD student from the National University of Singapore, has joined the New Zealand research team to help with the metabolite analyses. She is in New Zealand for eight months, and has focused previously in Singapore onnutrition in pregnant women. She describes New Zealand’s research as “Definitely novel, and interesting.”

About Metabolites (or Metabolomes)

Each person’s metabolomics profile in blood and hair is almost unique, like a fingerprint of chemicals. Profiles of women who have particular diets, and who have pregnancy complications, may show common chemicals. If they do, then the team will build a complex mathematical model to see if what they ate had any commonality. The computer modelling work will be conducted by a bioinformatics specialist team led by Dr Neerja Karnani, Principal Investigator, and Dr Gerard Wong, Research Fellow, at the Singapore Institute for Clinical Studies.

Insights from Earlier Studies

Is the proposition that food can influence the health of a pregnancy, far-fetched? Gravida’s lead investigator Professor Phillip Baker says “Not at all. Increasingly, we’re finding food is very influential in healthy outcomes in pregnancy.”

Led by Professor Baker, the Gravida research team has had a series of ‘proof of concept’ studies accepted for worldwide publications. These studies have compared metabolite profiles of women who have pregnancy complications (such as pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes and growth restricted babies) and have shown different metabolites are linked to these “poor outcomes”.

Singapore –Gravida Study

The Singapore-Gravida study is co-funded by a grant from the Agency of Science, Technology and Research (Singapore) and New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.

“New Zealand truly has made a breakthrough in the use of human hair as a diagnostic tool, and this complements our earlier work using blood samples” says Professor Baker. “We are now using our advantages.”

“This is exciting work for us because diets could hold a key to complications in pregnancy,” says Dr Mary Chong, project investigator and Research Scientist at Agency for Science Technology and Research’s Singapore Institute of Clinical Studies. “There’s real synergy between New Zealand and Singapore on this, and it’s a true collaboration that brings our strengths together.”

The Food for Health study is expected to report findings in 2016.

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