An exploratory study of perinatal hair cortisol concentrations in mother-infant dyads with severe psychiatric disorders versus healthy controls.
2021
Background
Maternal psychopathology during pregnancy is associated with
negative outcomes in offspring. Increased placental transfer of
maternal cortisol may contribute to mediate this association.
Hair cortisol concentrations (HCCs) appear to be a good biomarker of long-term prenatal stress exposure. Little is known
about the associations between severe maternal psychopathology and perinatal infant HCCs.
Aims
We assessed HCCs in the perinatal period in mother–infant
dyads with and without severe psychiatric disorders.
Method
We examined group differences in HCCs of mother–infant dyads
(n = 18) subjected to severe maternal psychiatric disorders versus healthy control dyads (n = 27). We assessed the correlation
of HCCs between mother and infant within both groups, and the
association between current maternal symptoms and HCCs in
patient dyads.
Results
Median (interquartile range) and distribution of HCC differed in
patients compared with control mothers (U = 468.5, P = 0.03).
HCCs in infants of patients did not differ from control infants
(U = 250.0, P = 0.67). Subsequently, we found that HCCs within
healthy control dyads were correlated (n = 27, r 0.55 (0.14),
P = 0.003), but were not within patient dyads (n = 18, r 0.082
(0.13), P = 0.746). HCCs in infants of patients showed a positive
correlation with maternal symptoms (n = 16, r = 0.63 (0.06),
P = 0.008).
Conclusions
These preliminary findings suggest that infant HCC reflect perinatal stress exposure. In infants, these early differences could
influence lifetime hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis functioning, which might be associated with increased susceptibility to
later disease.
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