The intergenerational association of epigenetic modifications between mothers and offspring, from birth to adolescence

Epigenetic modifications, such as DNA methylation (DNAm), have an important role in human disease development, with early DNAm patterns potentially influencing health outcomes in later life. In this paper, we examine the intergenerational association of epigenetic mutation load (EML), a biomarker of epigenetic instability, identifying DNAm outliers. Using mother-child dyads from a UK-based cohort study, we examine the intergenerational association of EML at three time points: birth, childhood (mean age 7.5), and adolescence (mean age 17). We find significant associations of maternal EML with offspring EML during childhood and adolescence, while this association is absent at birth. This suggests that shared environment, rather than direct biological transmission, might be playing a larger role in this intergenerational correlation. When looking at the association between own EML, and maternal EML, with early-adulthood outcomes, results suggest that own EML predicts worse cognitive abilities later in life, while maternal EML is not directly associated to offspring’s outcomes.