Elsevier

Biological Psychiatry

Volume 79, Issue 10, 15 May 2016, Pages 831-839
Biological Psychiatry

Archival Report
Maternal Exposure to Childhood Trauma Is Associated During Pregnancy With Placental-Fetal Stress Physiology

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2015.08.032Get rights and content

Abstract

Background

The effects of exposure to childhood trauma (CT) may be transmitted across generations; however, the time period(s) and mechanism(s) have yet to be clarified. We address the hypothesis that intergenerational transmission may begin during intrauterine life via the effect of maternal CT exposure on placental-fetal stress physiology, specifically placental corticotropin-releasing hormone (pCRH).

Methods

The study was conducted in a sociodemographically diverse cohort of 295 pregnant women. CT exposure was assessed using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire. Placental CRH concentrations were quantified in maternal blood collected serially over the course of gestation. Linear mixed effects and Bayesian piece-wise linear models were employed to test hypothesized relationships.

Results

Maternal CT exposure (CT+) was significantly associated with pCRH production. Compared with nonexposed women, CT+ was associated with an almost 25% increase in pCRH toward the end of gestation, and the pCRH trajectory of CT+ women exhibited an approximately twofold steeper increase after the pCRH inflection point at 19 weeks gestation.

Conclusions

To the best of our knowledge, this finding represents the first report linking maternal CT exposure with placental-fetal stress physiology, thus identifying a potential novel biological pathway of intergenerational transmission that may operate as early as during intrauterine life.

Section snippets

Participants

The study was conducted in a sociodemographically diverse cohort of 295 pregnant women attending prenatal care at two university-based medical centers in southern California (Table 1). All participants had singleton, intrauterine pregnancies with no known cord, placental, or uterine anomalies; fetal congenital malformations; or presence of any conditions known to be associated with dysregulated neuroendocrine function or corticosteroid medication use. All study procedures were approved by the

Results

Approximately half (57.3%) of the study participants reported no or low exposure to childhood trauma; 19.3% reported exposure to a single category of abuse or neglect; and 23.4% reported exposure to multiple types of maltreatment (Supplemental Table S1). The mean number of traumas (total CT) in the exposed population was 2.06 (±1.22 SD). The percentage of participants scoring above the cutoff for depression ranged between 7.8% and 11.1% at the different time points during pregnancy.

Compared

Discussion

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to establish an association between a woman’s exposure to trauma in her own childhood and placental-fetal stress physiology during pregnancy. Consistent with our hypothesis, pCRH production over gestation was significantly greater in women exposed to childhood trauma, with a graded effect such that exposure to two types of trauma (the mean number in the exposed group) corresponded to an almost 25% increase in pCRH concentrations toward the

Acknowledgments and Disclosures

This work was supported, in part, by US Public Health Service (National Institutes of Health) Grant Nos. RO1 HD-060628, PO1 HD-047609, R01 HD-041696, R29 HD-33506 (all to PDW), RO1 MH-105538 (to CB, PDW, and Damien Fair), and R01 NS-41298 (to Curt Sandman).

The authors declare no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.

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