Others have investigated changes in DNA methylation associated with maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy in umbilical cord serum. Guerrero-Preston and colleagues tested their hypothesis that global DNA hypomethylation in serum from the umbilical cord is associated with prenatal exposure to maternal smoking and perflouroalkyl compounds (PFCs), which are used in a wide-range of consumer and industrial products, such as stain-resistant coatings (Guerrero-Preston et al., 2010). They determined that global DNA methylation was most reduced in cord blood from newborns with mothers who smoked during pregnancy. Future studies using larger sample sets, as well as utilizing other surrogates of “global” DNA methylation, such as the repetitive elements LINE-1 or AluYb8, or DNA methylation microarrays, are needed in order to assess the possibility of utilizing DNA methylation status in cord blood as a biomarker for prenatal smoke exposure.
