ArticleTranslational psychiatry2016
Prenatal maternal depression is associated with offspring inflammation at 25 years: a prospective longitudinal cohort study.
Article in Translational psychiatry, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 51 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
51 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 104 citations in OpenAlex.
- From placenta to the foetus: a systematic review of in vitro models of stress- and inflammation-induced depression in pregnancy.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Pooled it
- Inflammation and depression in young people: a systematic review and proposed inflammatory pathways.Molecular psychiatry · 2022Pooled it
- Fetal programming of neuropsychiatric disorders by maternal pregnancy depression: a systematic mini review.Pediatric research · 2019Pooled it
- Prenatal Origins of Stress Regulation: Maternal Psychological Distress and Inflammation During Pregnancy Prospectively Predict Infant Behavioral Reactivity and Regulation.Developmental psychobiology · 2026Article
- Anxiety and Depression in Women's Cardiovascular Health: Risk Modifiers, Mechanisms and Clinical Implications.Journal of cardiovascular development and disease · 2026Review
- Age-dependent associations of psychological and family factors on systemic inflammation in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia survivors.Journal of cancer survivorship : research and practice · 2026Article
- Developmental origins of immune function: Maternal prenatal mood is associated with infant immune cell gene expression.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2026Article
- Effects of pre-gestational exposure to the stressors and perinatal mirtazapine administration on the excitability of hippocampal glutamate and brainstem monoaminergic neurons, hippocampal neuroplasticity, and anxiety-like behavior in rats.Molecular psychiatry · 2026Article
- Prenatal psychological stress mediates vertical transmission of gut microbiome to the next generation affecting offspring depressive-like behaviors and neurotransmitter.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Oral microbiome composition is associated with depressive symptoms during pregnancy.Brain, behavior, & immunity - health · 2025Article
- Associations between maternal adversity and health and children's telomere length.Translational psychiatry · 2025Article
- Associations of the gut microbiome and inflammatory markers with mental health symptoms: a cross-sectional study on Danish adolescents.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Associations between prenatal stress with offspring inflammation, depression and anxiety.Psychoneuroendocrinology · 2024Article
- Cushing's disease with twin pregnancy and diabetes mellitus: a case report and literature review.Endocrine journal · 2024Review
- Biological and behavioral pathways from prenatal depression to offspring cardiometabolic risk: Testing the developmental origins of health and disease hypothesis.Developmental psychology · 2024Review
- Association of perinatal characteristics with biomarkers of stress and inflammation in young adults: An exploratory study.Comprehensive psychoneuroendocrinology · 2024Article
- Maternal antenatal mental health and its associations with perinatal outcomes and the use of healthcare services in children from the NINFEA birth cohort study.European journal of pediatrics · 2024Article
- The Mood and Resilience in Offspring (MARIO) project: a longitudinal cohort study among offspring of parents with and without a mood disorder.BMC psychiatry · 2024Observational
- Exposure to parental depression in adolescence and proinflammatory phenotypes 20 years later.Brain, behavior, and immunity · 2024Article
- Prenatal and postnatal influences on behavioral development in a mouse model of preconceptional stress.Neurobiology of stress · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Animal studies and a handful of prospective human studies have demonstrated that young offspring exposed to maternal prenatal stress show abnormalities in immune parameters and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function. No study has examined the effect of maternal prenatal depression on offspring inflammation and HPA axis activity in adulthood, nor the putative role of child maltreatment in inducing these abnormalities. High-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) and awakening cortisol were measured at age 25 in 103 young-adult offspring of the South London Child Development Study (SLCDS), a prospective longitudinal birth cohort of mother-offspring dyads recruited in pregnancy in 1986. Maternal prenatal depression was assessed in pregnancy at 20 and 36 weeks; offspring child maltreatment (birth 17 years) was assessed at offspring ages 11, 16 and 25; and offspring adulthood depression (18-25 years) was assessed at age 25. Exposure to maternal prenatal depression predicted significantly elevated offspring hs-CRP at age 25 (odds ratio=11.8, 95% confidence interval (CI) (1.1, 127.0), P=0.041), independently of child maltreatment and adulthood depression, known risk factors for adulthood inflammation. In contrast, maternal prenatal depression did not predict changes in offspring adulthood cortisol; however, offspring exposure to child maltreatment did, and was associated with elevated awakening cortisol levels (B=161.9, 95% CI (45.4, 278.4), P=0.007). Fetal exposure to maternal depression during pregnancy has effects on immune function that persist for up to a quarter of a century after birth. Findings are consistent with the developmental origins of health and disease (DOHaD) hypothesis for the biological embedding of gestational psychosocial adversity into vulnerability for future physical and mental illness.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.