Prenatal exposure to air pollutants is associated with increased risk for neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders. During a study, researchers identified 19 nPM-related differentially expressed genes (nPM-DEGs) in blood and 124 nPM-DEGs in the cerebral cortex. The cerebral cortex transcriptional responses to nPM suggested neuroinflammation involvement, including CREB1, BDNF, and IFNγ genes. Blood and brain tissues showed nPM transcriptional changes related to DNA damage, oxidative stress, and immune responses. 3 blood nPM-DEGs showed a canonical correlation of 0.98 with 14 nPM-DEGs in the cerebral cortex, suggesting a convergence of gene expression changes in blood and cerebral cortex. Exploratory sex-stratified analyses suggested more nPM-DEGs in the female cerebral cortex than the male cerebral cortex. For a sex-stratified study, the researchers identified 2 nPM-DEGs (Rgl2 and Gm37534) shared between blood and cerebral cortex in a sex-dependent manner. The study suggested that prenatal nPM exposure induces transcriptional changes in the cerebral cortex, which are also observed in the blood. Further research is needed to replicate nPM-induced transcriptional changes with additional biologically relevant time points for brain development.
Link:jneurodevdisorders.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s11689-021-09380-3
