We found that APOE and CST3 were significantly upregulated in the placentas of MLPT children with developmental delay in gross motor skills domain, fine motor skills domain, and personal-social skills domain at 6 months, which suggested that APOE and CST3 are reliable biomarkers for neurodevelopment prediction of MLPT children (Fig. 5a–c and Additional file 2: Figure S3). Here, APOE is linked to Global developmental delay.