title: Clinical and environmental influences on metabolic biomarkers collected for newborn screening.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Identifying common clinical and environmental factors that influence newborn metabolic biomarkers will improve the utilization of metabolite panels for clinical diagnostic medicine.
  
  
  METHODS
  Environmental effects including gender, season of birth, gestational age, birth weight, feeding method and age at time of collection were evaluated for over 50 metabolites collected by the Iowa Neonatal Metabolic Screening Program on 221,788 newborns over a six year period.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We replicated well known observations that low birth weight and preterm infants have higher essential amino acids and lower medium and long chain acylcarnitine levels than their term counterparts. Smaller, but still significant, differences were observed for gender and timing of sample collection, specifically the season in which the infant was born. Most intriguing were our findings of higher thyroid stimulating hormone in the winter months (P<1×10(-40)) which correlated with an increased false positive rate of congenital hypothyroidism in the winter (0.9%) compared to summer (0.6%). Previous studies, conducted globally, have identified an increased prevalence of suspected and confirmed cases of congenital hypothyroidism in the winter months. We found that the percentage of unresolved suspected cases were slightly higher in the winter (0.3% vs. 0.2%).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We identified differences in metabolites by gestational age, birth weight, gender and season. Some are widely reported such as gestational age and birth weight, while others such as the effect of seasonality are not as well studied.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pediatrics, University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, Iowa City, IA 52242, USA. kelli-ryckman@uiowa.edu
authors.forename: Kelli K
authors.initials: KK
authors.lastname: Ryckman
authors.forename: Stanton L
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Berberich
authors.forename: Oleg A
authors.initials: OA
authors.lastname: Shchelochkov
authors.forename: Daniel E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Cook
authors.forename: Jeffrey C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Murray
mesh_terms: D000601:Amino Acids, Essential / Q000097:blood*; D015415:Biomarkers / Q000097:blood*; D001724:Birth Weight; D003409:Congenital Hypothyroidism / Q000097:blood; D005189:False Positive Reactions; D005260:Female; D005865:Gestational Age; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D008297:Male; D015997:Neonatal Screening; D012621:Seasons; D013972:Thyrotropin / Q000097:blood*; D014362:Trypsinogen / Q000097:blood*
chemical_list: D000601:Amino Acids, Essential; D015415:Biomarkers; D014362:Trypsinogen; D013972:Thyrotropin