ArticlePloS one2021
Maternal prenatal stress exposure and sex-specific risk of severe infection in offspring.
Article in PloS one, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Abnormal intestinal microbial colonization in prenatally stressed offspring is related to lung and intestinal cytokine expression.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Maternal oxytocin administration mitigates nociceptive, social, and epigenetic impairments in adolescent offspring exposed to perinatal trauma.Neurotherapeutics : the journal of the American Society for Experimental NeuroTherapeutics · 2025Article
- Antenatal depressive and anxiety symptoms in early pregnancy and offspring allergic diseases during toddlerhood.World journal of pediatrics : WJP · 2025Article
- Maternal stressful life events during pregnancy and childhood asthma and wheeze.Annals of allergy, asthma & immunology : official publication of the American College of Allergy, Asthma, & Immunology · 2024Article
- Developmental programming of tissue-resident macrophages.Frontiers in immunology · 2024Review
- Article
- Gene Expression in Cord Blood and Tuberculosis in Early Childhood: A Nested Case-Control Study in a South African Birth Cohort.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2023Article
- Maternal adverse childhood experiences impact fetal adrenal volume in a sex-specific manner.Biology of sex differences · 2023Article
- Canada's Colonial Genocide of Indigenous Peoples: A Review of the Psychosocial and Neurobiological Processes Linking Trauma and Intergenerational Outcomes.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Review
- Preconception stress exposure from childhood to adolescence and birth outcomes: The impact of stress type, severity and consistency.Frontiers in reproductive health · 2022Article
- Programming of Vascular Dysfunction by Maternal Stress: Immune System Implications.Frontiers in physiology · 2022Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundMaternal stressful life events during pregnancy have been associated with immune dysregulation and increased risk for asthma and atopy in offspring. Few studies have investigated whether prenatal stress is associated with increased overall or specific infectious diseases in childhood, nor explored sex differences. We sought to examine the relationship between the nature and timing of maternal stress in pregnancy and hospitalisation with infection in offspring.
methodsBetween 1989 and 1992, exposure data on stressful life events were collected from pregnant women (Gen1) in the Raine Study at 18 and 34 weeks' gestation and linked to statutory state-wide hospital morbidity data. We examined associations between the number, category and timing of maternal prenatal stress events and overall and clinical groups of offspring (Gen2) infection-related hospitalisation until age 16 years, adjusting for maternal age, education, and smoking in pregnancy in addition to the presence of siblings at birth.
resultsOf 2,141 offspring with complete stress in pregnancy data available, 1,089 had at least one infection-related hospitalisation, with upper respiratory tract infections the most common (n = 556). Each additional stressful life event during pregnancy was associated with increased risk in male offspring for hospitalisation with all infection types. There was little evidence of these associations in girls.
conclusionsIncreased exposure to stressful life events in utero is associated with sex-specific infection-related hospitalisations in childhood. Prenatal stress may adversely affect early immune development for boys and increase the risk of more severe infections. Mechanistic understanding would inform preventative interventions.
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