# Novel approaches for assessing the roles of dietary supplements in pregnancy: Interactions with maternal diet quality and environmental chemical exposures

> **NIH NIH UH3** · UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN · 2020 · $185,564

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
This Administrative Supplement will contribute important findings related to dietary predictors of newborn
outcomes in the Cumulative Effects of Prenatal Stress and Chemical Exposures on Child Development
(ECHO.CA.IL, NIH 5UH3OD023272) parent study. ECHO.CA.IL is co-led by researchers at the University of
Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the University of California, San Francisco and is a part of the nation-wide
Environmental influences of Child Health Outcomes Program (ECHO). The mission of the ECHO program is to
enhance the health of children for generations to come, and a critical goal of ECHO.CA.IL is to use innovative
methods to address gaps in our knowledge of the impacts of prenatal exposures to ubiquitous endocrine
disrupting chemicals (EDC) and chronic maternal stress (as well as the interaction of these) on birth outcomes
and child development.
 The proposed Supplement aims align with both the parent study and with two of the five target health-related
goals in the ECHO program: (1) pre-, peri-, and postnatal outcomes, and (2) positive health. The proposed
research will utilize data from the Illinois Kids Development Study (I-KIDS), which is the prospective pregnancy
cohort being recruited at the University of Illinois. I-KIDS, enrolls women in the first trimester of pregnancy and
longitudinally follows mothers and their children during pregnancy and throughout childhood. In addition to
evaluating the impacts of EDCs and maternal stress on child outcomes, we also have a strong interest in
assessing diet in I-KIDS mothers to understand whether diet could buffer the negative effects of EDCs and stress
during pregnancy. To that end, a novel preliminary finding from I-KIDS mothers and babies demonstrates that
high maternal diet quality may mitigate the negative effects of one class of EDCs (parabens) on birth outcomes,
suggesting that maternal diet may protect pregnant women and their infants from the deleterious effects of EDCs.
However, while almost all (99%) of pregnant women in our cohort consume some type of vitamin/mineral
supplement and 97% consume a prenatal supplement, we have not investigated how supplements contribute to
pregnancy outcomes in our cohort, or whether certain patterns of supplement intake modify relationships
between EDCs and birth outcomes. Therefore, the overarching goal of the current research will be to use an
innovative statistical approach developed to deal with complex mixtures of environmental chemicals (weighted
quantile sum regression) to 1) evaluate associations between patterns of micronutrient intake from supplements
in pregnancy and birth outcomes (birth weight, length, head circumference, gestational age at birth), and 2)
understand how these patterns of micronutrient intakes from supplements interact with maternal diet quality and
EDC exposures to influence birth outcomes.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10146161
- **Project number:** 3UH3OD023272-05S2
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
- **Principal Investigator:** Susan L Schantz
- **Activity code:** UH3 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $185,564
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2016-09-21 → 2023-08-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10146161

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10146161, Novel approaches for assessing the roles of dietary supplements in pregnancy: Interactions with maternal diet quality and environmental chemical exposures (3UH3OD023272-05S2). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10146161. Licensed CC0.

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