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3-204 - Transmission of Health Risk From Mother to Infant: Maternal Prenatal Stress, HPA Axis Functioning, and Infant Health

Sat, April 8, 4:30 to 6:00pm, Austin Convention Center, Meeting Room 7

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Maternal prenatal stress has been associated with risks to offspring including premature birth and subsequent adverse health outcomes, including obesity and metabolic problems. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis may be a key physiological mechanism by which mothers’ life stress is transmitted to infants. All four of the papers in this symposium focus on maternal HPA functioning during pregnancy or the early postpartum period. Study 1 found that mothers with higher cumulative disadvantage and childhood trauma showed dysregulated patterns of diurnal cortisol during pregnancy, including flattened diurnal cortisol slopes. The remaining three studies all report on infant health-related outcomes. In study 2, mothers’ cortisol was collected multiple times during a laboratory visit in mid-pregnancy. Cortisol output (area under the curve with respect to ground; AUCg) predicted gestational age at birth, such that mothers with higher AUCg had babies born earlier. Moreover, mothers’ prenatal social support was associated with lower maternal cortisol AUCg. Study 3 sampled mothers’ cortisol multiple times across pregnancy, and found that both prenatal cortisol trajectories and levels of placental CRH predicted child catch-up growth, a marker of obesity risk, in the first two years postpartum. Study 4 also examined childhood obesity risk, finding an association between maternal cortisol in breast milk at three months postpartum and infant BMI over the first two years of life. Taken together, these studies illustrate the importance of understanding maternal physiological stress during pregnancy and its potential impact on child health outcomes including gestational age at birth and indices of childhood obesity.

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