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Racial variation in umbilical cord blood sex steroid hormones and the insulin-like growth factor axis in African-American and white female neonates

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Abstract

Purpose

To evaluate whether there is racial variation in venous umbilical cord blood concentrations of sex steroid hormones and the insulin-like growth factor (IGF) axis between female African-American and white neonates.

Methods

Maternal and birth characteristics and venous umbilical cord blood samples were collected from 77 African-American and 41 white full-term uncomplicated births at two urban hospitals in 2004 and 2005. Cord blood was measured for testosterone, dehydroespiandrosterone-sulfate, estradiol, and sex steroid hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) by immunoassay. IGF-1, IGF-2, and IGF-binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) were measured by ELISA. Crude and multivariable-adjusted geometric mean concentrations were computed for the hormones.

Results

African-American neonates weighed less at birth (3,228 g vs. 3,424 g, p < 0.004) than whites. Birth weight was positively correlated with IGF-1, IGFBP-3, and the molar ratio of IGF-1 to IGFBP-3, but inversely correlated with the molar ratio of IGF-2 to IGFBP-3. Adjusted models showed higher testosterone (1.82 ng/ml vs. 1.47 ng/ml, p = 0.006) and the molar ratio of testosterone to SHBG (0.42 vs. 0.30, p = 0.03) in African-American compared to white female neonates. IGF-1, IGF-2, and IGFBP-3 were lower in African-American compared to white female neonates, but only the difference for IGF-2 remained significant (496.5 ng/ml vs. 539.2 ng/ml, p = 0.04).

Conclusion

We provide evidence of racial variation in cord blood testosterone and testosterone to SHBG in African-American compared to white female neonates, and higher IGF-2 in white compared to African-American female neonates. Findings suggest plausible explanations for a prenatal influence on subsequent breast cancer risk and mortality. Further work is needed to confirm these observations.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Anna DeNooyer, MHS, research assistant, and Stacey Meyerer, laboratory manager, both at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, for their assistance in the conduct of this study, the delivery room nurses at the Prince George’s Hospital Center and the Johns Hopkins Hospital for collecting the cord blood specimens, and Yuzhen Tao in the laboratory of Dr. Pollak for overseeing the laboratory assays. Authors received grant support from National Cancer Institute grant U54 (Howard CA091431) and U54 (Hopkins CA091409).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA

    Tanya Agurs-Collins

  2. Department of Cancer Epidemiology and Prevention, Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Sabine Rohrmann

  3. Department of Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Catherine Sutcliffe & Elizabeth A. Platz

  4. Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Jessica L. Bienstock

  5. Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Elizabeth A. Platz

  6. Howard University Cancer Center, Washington, DC, USA

    Deborah Monsegue

  7. Howard University Human Genome Center, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA

    Folasade Akereyeni

  8. Department of Laboratory Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Gary Bradwin & Nader Rifai

  9. Department of Medicine and Oncology, Jewish General Hospital and McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Michael N. Pollak

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  1. Tanya Agurs-Collins
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  2. Sabine Rohrmann
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  3. Catherine Sutcliffe
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  4. Jessica L. Bienstock
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  5. Deborah Monsegue
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  7. Gary Bradwin
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  8. Nader Rifai
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  9. Michael N. Pollak
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  10. Elizabeth A. Platz
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Correspondence to Tanya Agurs-Collins.

Additional information

Drs. Agurs-Collins (formerly of Howard University Cancer Center) and Platz (Hopkins) co-proposed and co-conducted this study. A companion paper on racial variation in the in utero milieu for male births in the context of prostate cancer has been published [45]. PubMed PMID: 19423525; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3012385. This decision was made a priori to allow the investigators at the two institutions involved in this U54 to each take the lead on one of the papers.

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Agurs-Collins, T., Rohrmann, S., Sutcliffe, C. et al. Racial variation in umbilical cord blood sex steroid hormones and the insulin-like growth factor axis in African-American and white female neonates. Cancer Causes Control 23, 445–454 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-011-9893-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-011-9893-6

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