Prenatal Environmental Exposures, Fetal Development, and Child Health Across the Life Course

Pregnancy is a critical window in which environmental, biological, behavioral, and social factors can influence fetal development and shape health trajectories from birth through childhood and adolescence. Relevant prenatal exposures span several domains:

• Maternal health and behavior: nutrition, obesity, diabetes and other cardiometabolic conditions, infection and inflammation, psychosocial stress, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbance, smoking, alcohol use, and medications;
• Environmental and occupational hazards: air pollution, endocrine-disrupting chemicals, pesticides, persistent organic pollutants, plastics, metals, climate-related exposures, and occupational risks;
• Contextual factors: the built environment and social and socioeconomic circumstances.

These factors may act independently or jointly through placental dysfunction, oxidative stress, immune activation, endocrine disruption, altered fetal programming, epigenetic regulation, and changes in organ development. Their effects can vary by exposure timing, dose, and duration, as well as by fetal sex, genetic susceptibility, socioeconomic context, and access to maternal and child healthcare. Yet important uncertainties persist regarding causal relationships, susceptible periods, biological pathways, exposure mixtures, population heterogeneity, and the long-term clinical significance of many prenatal exposures.

Goal

This Research Topic aims to advance interdisciplinary understanding of how prenatal environmental exposures influence fetal growth, pregnancy and neonatal outcomes, and subsequent child health across multiple systems. We seek contributions that identify modifiable risk and protective factors, clarify critical windows of susceptibility, investigate biological mechanisms, and characterize vulnerable populations. We particularly welcome work that strengthens causal inference, exposure assessment, risk prediction, and life-course follow-up.

By integrating clinical, epidemiological, environmental, molecular, and translational evidence, the collection aims to inform risk stratification, maternal counseling, prenatal care, early identification, prevention, and targeted intervention—while addressing health inequalities across diverse geographic, ethnic, and socioeconomic populations.

Scope and Information for Authors

We welcome Original Research, Reviews, Methods papers, and other article types permitted by the journal. Themes include, but are not limited to:

• Maternal nutrition, micronutrients, dietary patterns, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and cardiometabolic health
• Maternal infection, inflammation, immune dysregulation, fever, and microbiome-related exposures
• Psychosocial stress, depression, anxiety, sleep, social adversity, and socioeconomic determinants
• Tobacco, alcohol, substance use, medications, assisted reproduction, and occupational exposures
• Air pollution, climate and temperature, metals, pesticides, endocrine disruptors, plastics, and other environmental toxicants
• Exposure mixtures, cumulative exposures, exposome research, and gene–environment interactions
• Placental function, oxidative stress, immune and endocrine pathways, epigenetics, and multi-omics approaches (metabolomics, proteomics, and others)
• Fetal growth, preterm birth, birth defects, neonatal morbidity, and perinatal outcomes
• Child growth, neurodevelopment, mental health, and respiratory, allergic, cardiovascular, metabolic, immune, and reproductive outcomes
• Prospective and birth cohorts, sibling and family-based studies, natural experiments, causal inference, mediation analysis, and life-course designs
• Biomarkers, imaging, digital health, prediction models, prevention strategies, and early interventions

We especially encourage studies from low- and middle-income countries, underrepresented populations, and multicenter or international collaborations.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Study Protocol
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Prenatal environmental exposures, Fetal development, Developmental origins of health and disease, Placenta and epigenetics, Child health outcomes

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.