Environmental epidemiologist Miranda Spratlen works to ensure that expectant mothers have actionable information and tangible solutions for their own pre- and post-natal wellbeing and the health of their children. As a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, she examines how environmental exposures in pregnant mothers and newborns may affect the children’s long-term health, especially the emergence of cardiometabolic diseases like diabetes.

“I have always been fascinated about this vulnerable time period in our life, where early exposures can have long lasting effects,” Spratlen said. “The developmental origins of disease are really important, and this is a key time period to focus on, because so many of your organs are developing, and it has the capacity to have such big impacts later in your life.”

Spratlen works with Julie Herbstman, an associate professor of environmental health sciences, to analyze data from a cohort of mothers and children affected by the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center (WTC). This research includes geographic proximity as an exposure variable and compares pregnant women living within two miles of the WTC to those living further out in New York City. The team is investigating how exposure to toxic chemicals that may have been released during the collapse of the towers has affected pregnant mothers and their babies.

“We are finding that a pregnant mother’s exposure in this disaster is having lasting cognitive and cardiometabolic effects on the children,” Spratlen said.

Specifically, research published in Environmental Pollution indicated that pregnant women living closer to the disaster had higher levels of perfluoralkyl substances with an effect on their children in utero. Subsequent work ties this exposure to childhood cognitive effects. Follow-up research will look at more recent data and focus on cardiometabolic changes and impacts. 

Spratlen also explores how chemical exposures and maternal stress related to the WTC disaster may have affected children’s birth outcomes. The focus is on the driving factors behind previously observed associations between maternal proximity to the WTC and reductions in birth weight and length. Principal component analysis is used to characterize exposure to several different chemicals and stress, which is complicated to measure, according to Spratlen. “One of the reasons I like looking at chemicals is that they provide an objective measure, while with stress, there are a lot of factors that go into someone’s stress level and how they categorize it.”

Initial findings indicate that chemicals such as dioxins played the strongest role in observed WTC-related reductions in birth length and weight. Stress was less of a factor.

Spratlen completed her Ph.D. in environmental health and engineering at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. There, she examined the relationships between arsenic exposure, arsenic metabolization, and diabetes-related outcomes in indigenous American communities. Today, she builds on her doctoral research through a collaboration with Ana Navas-Acien, a professor of environmental health sciences, and explores how a mother’s exposure to arsenic may affect the development of diabetes in her children.

For example, rice is a common diet staple, but research has indicated that exposure to arsenic in rice may have adverse pregnancy outcomes and developmental effects on infants. “I believe it’s important to help mothers understand what these impacts can be, and how they can be as healthy as possible,” Spratlen said. 

Her most recent research has tied maternal arsenic exposure to increased risk for diabetes in the offspring. “There is some mechanistic evidence on the diabetogenic effect of arsenic, but the exact link between early life exposure and later development of diabetes is still unclear,” she explained. “We’re trying to understand if the link is causal or not. Finding a mechanistic connection would help us determine if early arsenic exposure has a causal effect on increased diabetes risk.”

Spratlen’s analysis will include data from children during the first year of their lives to look for associations between prenatal and early arsenic exposure and metabolic changes that have been linked to the development of diabetes.

— Karina Alexanyan, Ph.D.