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Phthalates, compounds commonly used in plastics and personal care products, have been associated with childhood obesity in cross-sectional and some longitudinal studies. Using advanced statistical methods, we characterized the heterogeneity in body mass development patterns over childhood (ages 2-14 years) and explored associations with maternal prenatal urinary concentrations of phthalates among 335 children in the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) cohort study. Height and weight were measured every one to two years in this cohort, which had a high prevalence of obesity and overweight. Building upon a previous analysis that showed a positive association between prenatal phthalate exposure and body mass index (BMI) in CHAMACOS children, we used three advanced statistical methods: generalized additive models, growth mixture models, and functional principal component analysis with tree-based methods to identify patterns of childhood BMI development and allow for non-linear relationships with the environmental exposures. Our results highlight the heterogeneity in childhood BMI development patterns and suggest a sex-specific non-linear association between prenatal monoethyl phthalate urinary concentrations and BMI level in children, confirmed across a variety of statistical methods. There is also evidence to suggest positive associations between DEHP metabolites and BMI stabilization during puberty for girls.

The U.S. art museum sector is grappling with diversity. While previous work has investigated the demographic diversity of museum staffs and visitors, the diversity of artists in their collections has remained unreported. We conduct the first large-scale study of artist diversity in museums. By scraping the public online catalogs of 18 major U.S. museums, deploying a sample of 10,000 artist records comprising over 9,000 unique artists to crowdsourcing, and analyzing 45,000 responses, we infer artist genders, ethnicities, geographic origins, and birth decades. Our results are threefold. First, we provide estimates of gender and ethnic diversity at each museum, and overall, we find that 85% of artists are white and 87% are men. Second, we identify museums that are outliers, having significantly higher or lower representation of certain demographic groups than the rest of the pool. Third, we find that the relationship between museum collection mission and artist diversity is weak, suggesting that a museum wishing to increase diversity might do so without changing its emphases on specific time periods and regions. Our methodology can be used to broadly and efficiently assess diversity in other fields.

It has been hypothesized that environmental exposures at key development periods such as in utero play a role in childhood growth and obesity. To investigate whether in utero exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its metabolite, dichlorodiphenyldichloroethane (DDE), is associated with childhood physical growth, we took a novel statistical approach to analyze data from the CHAMACOS cohort study. To model heterogeneity in the growth patterns, we used a finite mixture model in combination with a data transformation to characterize body mass index (BMI) with four groups and estimated the association between exposure and group membership. In boys, higher maternal concentrations of DDT and DDE during pregnancy are associated with a BMI growth pattern that is stable until about age five followed by increased growth through age nine. In contrast, higher maternal DDT exposure during pregnancy is associated with a flat, relatively stable growth pattern in girls. This study suggests that in utero exposure to DDT and DDE may be associated with childhood BMI growth patterns, not just BMI level, and both the magnitude of exposure and sex may impact the relationship.

ObjectiveTo investigate long-term body mass index (BMI) changes associated with childbearing.Design and methodsAdjusted mean BMI changes were estimated by race-ethnicity, baseline BMI, and parity using longitudinal regression models for 3,943 young females over 10 and 25 year follow-up from the ongoing 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth cohort.ResultsEstimated BMI increases varied by group, ranging from a low of 2.1 BMI units for white, non-overweight nulliparas over the first 10 years to a high of 10.1 BMI units for black, overweight multiparas over the full 25-year follow-up. Impacts of parity were strongest among overweight multiparas and primaparas at 10 years, ranges 1.4-1.7 and 0.8-1.3 BMI units, respectively. Among non-overweight women, parity-related gain at 10 years varied by number of births among black and white but not Hispanic women. After 25 years, childbearing significantly increased BMI only among overweight multiparous black women.ConclusionChildbearing is associated with permanent weight gain in some women, but the relationship differs by maternal BMI in young adulthood, number of births, race-ethnicity, and length of follow-up. Given that overweight black women may be at special risk for accumulation of permanent, long-term weight after childbearing, effective interventions for this group are particularly needed.

ObjectivesTo address molecular mechanisms underlying obesity development, we examined patterns of critical metabolism-related hormones, adiponectin and leptin (adipokines), over childhood.Subjects and designPlasma adiponectin and leptin were measured in 80 Mexican-American children at birth and again at 2, 5, and 9 years from the ongoing prospective cohort followed by the Center for the Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS). We used a mixture modeling approach to identify patterns in adipokine trajectories from birth to 9 years.ResultsLeptin was positively related to child body size within all ages, however adiponectin had inverse and weaker associations with BMI at 2, 5, and 9 years. Correlations between adipokine levels over the 0-2, 2-5, and 5-9-year periods increased for both leptin (r = 0.06, 0.31 and 0.62) and adiponectin (r = 0.25, 0.41 and 0.46). Our mixture modeling approach identified three trajectory clusters for both leptin (1L [slowly-rising], 2L [rapidly-rising], and 3L [stable]) and adiponectin (1A [steep-dropping and rebounding], 2A [moderately-dropping], and 3A [stable]). While leptin groups were most separated over the 2-9-year period, adiponectin trajectories displayed greatest heterogeneity from birth to 2 years. Children in the rapidly-rising 2L group had highest BMI and waist circumference at 9 years. Further, children with greater birth weight had increased odds of belonging to this high risk group (OR = 1.21 95% CI 1.03, 1.43, compared to stable group 3L). Children whose mothers consumed more sugar-sweetened beverages during pregnancy were at risk of being in the steep-dropping 1A group (OR = 1.08, 95% CI 1.01, 1.17, compared to stable group 3A).ConclusionOur results highlight developmental differences in leptin and adiponectin over the childhood period. Leptin closely reflects child body size however factors affecting adiponectin and long-term consequences of its changes over infancy need to be further explored.

Background Mesoamerican nephropathy is a leading contributor to premature mortality in Central America. Efforts to identify the cause are hampered by difficulties in distinguishing associations with potential initiating factors from common exposures thought to exacerbate the progression of all forms of established chronic kidney disease (CKD). We explored evidence of disease onset or departure from the healthy estimated glomerular filtration rate distribution [departure from ∼eGFR(healthy)] in an at-risk population. Methods Two community-based cohorts (adults aged 18–30 years, n  = 351 and 420) from 11 rural communities in Northwest Nicaragua were followed up over 7 and 3 years respectively. We examined associations with both (i) incident CKD and (ii) the time point of departure from ∼eGFR(healthy), using a hidden Markov model. Results CKD occurred in men only (male incidence rate: 0.7%/year). Fifty-three (out of 1878 visits, 2.7%) and 8 (out of 1067 visits, 0.8%) episodes of probable departure from ∼eGFR(healthy) occurred in men and women, respectively. Cumulative time in sugarcane work and symptoms of excess occupational sun exposure were associated with incident CKD. The same exposures were associated with probability of departure from ∼eGFR(healthy) in time-updated analyses along with measured and self-reported weight loss, nausea, vomiting and cramps, as well as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug use. Conclusions CKD burden in this population is high and risk factors for established disease are occupational. Additionally, a syndrome suggesting an alternative exposure is associated with evidence of disease onset supporting a possible separate unknown initiating factor for which further investigation is needed. Interventions to reduce the impact of occupational risks should be pursued meanwhile. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mesoamerican nephropathy (MeN) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Central America, yet its aetiology remains unclear. Environmental exposures including heat stress, pesticides, and heavy metals have all been suggested as possible causes or exacerbating factors of the disease, but intermittent and cumulative exposures are difficult to capture using conventional biomonitoring. Locus-specific differential DNA-methylation (DNAm) which is known to occur in association with these environmental exposures can be readily measured in peripheral blood leucocytes, and therefore have the potential to be used as biomarkers of these exposures. In this study, we aimed first to perform a hypothesis-free epigenome-wide association study of MeN to identify disease-specific methylation signatures, and second to explore the association of DNAm changes associated with potentially relevant environmental exposures and MeN onset. Whole-blood epigenome-wide DNAm was analysed from a total of 312 blood samples: 53 incident cases (pre- and post-evidence of disease onset), 61 matched controls and 16 established cases, collected over a 5-year period. Mixed-effect models identified three unique differentially methylated regions that associated with incident kidney injury, two of which lie within the intron of genes ( Amphiphysin on chromosome 7, and SLC29A3 chromosome 10), none of which have been previously reported with any other kidney disease. Next, we conducted a hypothesis-driven analysis examining the coefficients of CpG sites reported to be associated with ambient temperature, pesticides, arsenic, cadmium, and chromium. However, none showed an association with MeN disease onset. Therefore, we did not observe previously reported patterns of DNA methylation that might support a role of pesticides, temperature, or the examined metals in causing MeN., Competing Interests: None declared., (© The Author(s) 2025. Published by Oxford University Press.)