Umbilical Cord Blood Cell Transcriptional and Methylation Signatures at Birth Are Associated with BPD Development [RNA-Seq]

Most existing clinical prediction models for BPD show limited accuracy in predicting BPD development when validated using external data, stressing the need for novel biomarkers to identify at-risk infants for early and effective interventions. We leveraged existing frozen umbilical cord blood samples from the Northwestern University Cord Blood Biobank (NUCord) to perform parallel transcriptional and DNA methylation profiling.

Chorioamnionitis-associated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in our cohort included markers previously established in clinical and animal BPD studies, such as genes related to NF-κB signaling and immune responses. Importantly, these genes were highly associated with chorioamnionitis infection status specifically in preterm infants. We also identified that BPD development is associated with disrupted methylation signatures in microRNA genes and genes associated with glucose metabolism.