Furan fatty acid metabolite in newborns predicts risk of asthma

Background Intake of fish‐oil and fatty fish during pregnancy has been shown to reduce the risk of childhood asthma but biomarkers of such intake are lacking. Objective To establish biomarkers of prenatal fish‐oil exposure from newborn dry blood spot metabolomics profiles and assess their relevance for childhood asthma risk stratification. Methods The Danish COPSAC2010 mother–child cohort was utilized to investigate the effect of a double‐blinded randomized controlled trial of fish‐oil supplementation during pregnancy on dry blood spot liquid‐chromatography mass spectrometry‐based metabolomics profiles of 677 newborns. We thereafter investigated the association between fish‐oil associated biomarkers in the newborn and development of asthma‐related outcomes. Replication was sought in the independent observational COPSAC2000 cohort with 387 newborn metabolomics profiles. Results The newborn metabolomics profiles differed between children in the fish‐oil vs. placebo group in COPSAC2010 (area under the receiver operator curve = 0.94 ± 0.03, p