Initially observed positive associations between maternal coffee consumption and offspring neurodevelopmental difficulties diminished after adjusting for confounding factors, including smoking, alcohol use, education, and income, according to a recent study.
Researchers investigated the effects of maternal coffee consumption during pregnancy on neurodevelopmental difficulties (NDs) in offspring, utilizing data from the Norwegian Mother, Father, and Child Cohort Study. Previous research has yielded varied findings regarding this relationship. Published in Psychological Medicine, the study analyzed observational data from 58,694 mother-child pairs and 22,576 father-child pairs, employing Mendelian randomization (MR) with genetic variants associated with coffee consumption to assess potential causal relationships.
The observational results indicated positive associations between maternal coffee intake and difficulties in social communication and hyperactivity/impulsivity. However, after adjusting for confounding factors such as maternal smoking, alcohol consumption, parental education, and income, these associations were significantly reduced. MR analyses suggested a possible causal relationship between increased maternal coffee consumption and social communication difficulties, though the strength of this association varied when considering genetic confounding. In individual-level MR analyses, the beta for social communication difficulties was 0.128 (se = 0.043, p = 0.003), while hyperactivity/impulsivity showed a beta of 0.348 (se = 0.141, p = 0.010) in two-sample MR analyses.
After controlling for confounding factors, most associations diminished to non-significant levels, except for difficulties in social communication and behavioral flexibility at age three and attention/hyperactivity at age five (p < 0.005). In further MR sensitivity analyses, the association between higher maternal coffee consumption and social communication difficulties reduced to a beta of 0.088 (se = 0.049, p = 0.071) after adjusting for pleiotropy, suggesting the remaining associations may be due to genetic confounding.
Full disclosures can be found in the published study.